By Felix Hoover

For YourNewsColumbus.com

Posted 05-04-09

 

 

Memory Lane intersected with Mount Vernon Avenue on Saturday for the 6th Annual History of Black Columbus Conference.

 

This year's version dealt with The Black Freedom Struggle in Columbus: From Jim Crow to the Black Power Movement.

 

Judson L. Jeffries, professor of African American annd African Studies and director of the AAAS Community Extension Center, welcomed an audience that was eager to ask and answer questions throughout the day.

 

Tom Dillard, George Miller and John B. Williams related their own experiences with racism and talked about how some of their prominent relatives responded to it.

 

William Potter discussed his role in the development of Mount Vernon Plaza and Singletary's PlazaMart Samuel Gresham Jr., Fred Parker and Gloria Ann Zebbs Anderson discussed civil-rights organizations, focusing on the Columbus Urban League, local chapter of the NAACP, and Congress on Racial Equality, respectively.

 

Mark Christian, associate professor of Black World Studies at Miami University, spoke on "Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Columbus." Christian said that in 19xx he did a master's thesis on Garvey. leader of the Back to Africa movement.

Christian conceded that audience members, many of whom have shaped local history the past six decades, might be able to supply more specifics than he about Garvey's role in Columbus.

 

But he provided perspectives on the international movement and showed how he was part of a continuum of prominent blacks, including Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois and President Obama.

 

The afternoon session picked up after lunch with Ann B. Walker talking about "The Role of the Media in the Struggle for Freedom and Equality"

 

Panels on the Politics of School Desegregation, the Student Movement at OSU and the Black Power Movement led to the afternoon keynote address by State Sen. Ray Miller on Lessons Learned from the Black Freedom Struggle: Where do we go from here?

 

For videos of the conference, call the extension center at (614) 292-3922.