Press Release

EXAMINING THE HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICANS AND VOTING IN AMERICA

The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council (IHC) co-hosts a film screening and discussion focused on the impact of the “Freedom Summer” of 1964.

CHICAGO – Join The Public Square at the IHC and its co-sponsors fo r “African Americans and Voting: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow” on Wednesday, June 18th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Chicago Cultural Center (First Floor Garland Room, 77 E. Randolph St., Chicago).

This program will examine how African Americans won the right to vote, how that right is influencing elections today, and how it will impact politics in the future. This event includes a screening of Mississippi, America, which documents the events of the "Freedom Summer" of 1964. Following the screening, Charles Payne, Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, and Kate Masur, Assistant Professor of History at Northwestern University, will lead a discussion about African Americans and voting throughout U.S. history.

This event is free and open to the public. Reservations are required and can be made by e-mailingevents@prairie.org or calling 312.422.5580. It is presented by The Public Square at the IHC, the Chicago Freedom School, the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, and the Chicago Cultural Center.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS
Charles Payne
is the Frank P. Hixon Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. His interests include urban education and school reform, social inequality, social change and modern African American history. He is the author of Getting What We Ask For: The Ambiguity of Success and Failure In Urban Education, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, and So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools.

Kate Masur is Assistant Professor of History at Northwestern University. She works on questions of race and citizenship in the nineteenth-century United States and is especially interested in cities, social movements, and political theory, as well as slave emancipations throughout the Atlantic World. Kate joined the Northwestern faculty in Fall 2005 after spending the previous year as a fellow at the Library of Congress’s John W. Kluge Center.

ABOUT THE PUBLIC SQUARE AT THE IHC
The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council fosters debate, dialogue, and exchange of ideas about cultural, social, and political issues with an emphasis on social justice. Programs promote participatory democracy by creating space for public conversations.

For more information about The Public Square at the IHC, please visit www.thepublicsquare.org or call 312.422.5580.

The Illinois Humanities Council is a nonprofit educational organization [501 (c) 3] dedicated to fostering a culture in which the humanities are a vital part of the lives of individuals and communities. Organized in 1973 as the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the IHC creates programs and funds organizations that promote greater understanding of, appreciation for, and involvement in the humanities by all Illinoisans, regardless of their economic resources, cultural background, or geographic location. The IHC is supported by state, federal, and private funds.

D A R E T O K N O W
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