24-25/07/2021 - Racial Violence: the American (hi)story (Διαδίκτυο)

International Conference - 24-25/047/2021 - Racial Violence: the American (hi)story

GIRES, the Global Institute for Research Education & Scholarship and the Greenwood African American Studies Center (GAASC) explore the highly complex issue of racial violence in the United States.
Commemorating the 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma Race Massacre (May 31) we wish to re-examine the role of racially motivated violence in the shaping of American society and identity. A century after the destruction, we wish to explore the reasons that the story of Greenwood, the African American part of Tulsa, also known as the Black Wall Street (among many other similar cases) was lost in oblivion. How and why one of the most powerful and independent African American communities in history was devastated and how the city, state and federal authorities facilitated such an action? What happened in similar cases?

Revisiting the 1910s and 1920s, we wish to understand the roots of the infamous Red Summer, along with riots and unrests of the era. Reaching the 1960s and 1970s we hope we discuss about the roots, rise and fall of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements and connect them with the 2010s and 2020s Black Lives Matter movement. We wish to analyze the contemporary cases of racially motivated civil unrests through the comparison of similar cases of the past in order to highlight similarities and differences. We hope to examine the role of city, state and federal authorities-including police, national guard and judicial system- in the social polarization, the formation of political and social movements and the shaping of collective memory and identity.

We hope to answer a spectrum of questions through the exploration of their multiple aspects. What are the semantics and limitations in characterizing or labeling such cases (riots, massacres. Unrest etc)? What lessons can we learn from the past? What are the shared roots, causes and prospects? How modern American citizenship is shaped? Are equality and freedom in the 21st century only a faded dream?

GIRES, dedicated to interdisciplinarity, invites scholars from diverse fields including but not limited to philosophy, religion, theology, sociology, anthropology, history, literature, art, economics, geography, cultural and political studies along with representatives from think-tanks and organizations to contribute to the discussion and to debate these issues.