On the Civil Rights Movement in its Global Context
On Tuesday, May 2, PLT Contributor Sarah Azaransky will deliver a guest lecture at UVA on her forthcoming book, This Worldwide Struggle: Religion and the International Roots of the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford University Press, 2017). The publication identifies a network of black Christian intellectuals and activists who looked abroad, even in other religious traditions, for ideas and practices that could transform American democracy. From the 1930s to the 1950s, they drew lessons from independence movements around the world for an American racial justice campaign.
Their religious perspectives and methods of moral reasoning developed theological blueprints for the classical phase of the Civil Rights Movement. Revealing fertile intersections of worldwide resistance movements, American racial politics, and interreligious exchanges that crossed literal borders and disciplinary boundaries, the book underscores important lessons on the role of religion in justice movements.
The presentation will begin at 2:00pm in Wilson Hall 301. Admission is free, and the public is invited to attend.
For details and release information on the new book, click here.
Sarah Azaransky is an assistant professor of social ethics at Union Theological Seminary. Her publications include The Dream is Freedom: Pauli Murray and American Democratic Faith (Oxford University Press, 2011) and an edited volume, Religion and Politics in America’s Borderlands (Lexington Books, 2013).