Resistance and Struggle Across Racial Regimes: Germany, South Africa, and the United States

In-person and live-streamed
A Symposium sponsored by:
Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at the MacMillan Center, Yale University
Co-sponsored by: The Amistad Committee, Inc.; Yale Education Studies Program; and Yale MacMillan Center’s Council on African Studies and European Studies Council
With generous support from the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund
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Using a comparative lens, this symposium examines resistance to the race-based legal orders and social hierarchies of Jim Crow United States, Nazi Germany, and apartheid-era South Africa. Beginning with a moderated panel discussion, three scholars will explore the history and memory of struggles against racialized social regimes, with attention to international inspiration, politics, and networking. This discussion will shed light on how actors in these different countries learned from other movements in developing tools of resistance and the roles such collective action played in dismantling oppressive racial regimes. The panel will address direct influences between nations, general parallels, as well as clear distinctions. Finally, the symposium will focus on contemporary pedagogical approaches for teaching the histories of these regimes (individually and in relation to each other) in classroom settings as well as in public history venues such as museums and historical sites.
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3:00 - 3:30 pm Coffee, tea, refreshments
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3:30–5:00 pm Panel Discussion:“Resisting Jim Crow, the Nazi Regime, and South African Apartheid”
Welcome:
· David Blight (Director of the GLC; Sterling Professor of History, Yale University); and
· Stephen Naron (Director, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies)
Moderator: Daniel Magaziner (Professor of History, Yale University)
Speakers:
· Imani Perry (Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University)
· Mark Roseman (Distinguished Professor, Pat M Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies, Professor in History, Adjunct Professor in Germanic Studies, Indiana University-Bloomington)- via Zoom
· Robert Trent Vinson (Director & Chair of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American & African Studies at the University of Virginia and a Research Associate at Stellenbosch University in South Africa)
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5:00–6:30 pm Buffet Reception
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6:30–8:00 pm Teacher Roundtable: Pedagogies of Resistance
A moderated roundtable featuring teachers who incorporate into their curricula resistance against one or more of the three racial regimes or engage in comparing resistance movements across these regimes.
Welcome:
· Aya Marczyk (Curriculum Development Fellow, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies); and
· Tom Thurston (Director of Education, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition)
Moderator: Leslie Blatteau (President, New Haven Federation of Teachers; member of the Anti-Racist Teaching and Learning Collective)
Teachers:
· Daisha Brabham (High School Teacher with Windsor Public Schools; Adjunct Faculty Southern CT State University; Teacher Educator with Anti-Racist Teaching and Learning Collective)
· Lindsey Rossler (10th grade Honors and AP World History teacher and Director of Talent Development, King School, Stamford, CT; RFK Speak Truth to Power Lead Educator)
· Teresa Willis (History teacher and curriculum developer)