Vanderbilt University Civil Rights Conference November 9th
Maria Gitin, Plenary Speaker
Ordinary Heroes in Alabama
A talk with slides and stories from Lewis V Baldwin’s childhood community
11 AM- Noon Vanderbilt Divinity Center, Nashville TN
I am honored to serve as the Plenary Speaker for this celebration of one of the most important voices in civil rights and religious history scholarship, Rev. Dr. Lewis V Baldwin. It was my great good fortune to meet and become friends with Dr. Baldwin through our shared experience of the civil rights movement in Wilcox County, Alabama where Baldwin was born and raised, and where I spent a short impactful summer working with SCLC and SNCC on the last large voter registration drive prior to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Bill.
My presentation, to include historic slides and stories from Dr. Baldwins’ hometown, is set for November 9th 11-noon at Vanderbilt Divinity School as part of a two-day celebration of Dr. Baldwin’s contributions.
The Voice of Conscience: Civil Rights, Post Civil Rights and the Future Freedom Struggle. The Program in African American and Diaspora Studies along with the Vanderbilt Divinity School presents a two day conference on November 8-9, 2013. This conference honors Dr. Lewis V. Baldwin on the occasion of his retirement from Vanderbilt after 30 years of teaching, research, and scholarship devoted to American Religious History and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.
More information and full program at: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/aframst/Event%20News CENTER
Wilcox County Freedom Fighters 
I wish that I could share in this. Dr. Baldwin has not been celebrated enough in his hometown. I am going to place this on the Chamber web site and facebook page. We should also submit an article to our local paper.
LikeLike
You are so right, Sheryl. It would be hard to over-estimate his contribution to King studies and even more importantly, to my mind, to teaching the true philosophy of nonviolent activism, activism that you and your family were in the forefront of, in Wilcox County. Lewis’s story and that of his brother, and little of his brother-in-law Clarence Blackman (who married Lewis’s sister Mary) are told in their own words in my forthcoming book.
LikeLike