UA Gladney Lecture to Feature Civil Rights Leader March 21

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The Rose Gladney Lecture for Justice and Social Change will be held at The University of Alabama W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library on March 21 at 7:30 p.m. with guest speaker Joan C. Browning.

The event is free and open to the public.

Browning came of age in the Southern freedom struggle and has spent her life as a civil rights activist. In her talk, “That’s not my Movement … Is it?” she will address her initiation into the Civil Rights Movement and her experiences in social justice and advocacy. Browning embraces the philosophy that all social justice advocates, whether fighting on issues of race, sex, class, or other issues, all enter the same door – and that no activist can accurately say “that’s not my movement.”

Browning’s first experience in the movement was in the fall of 1960. Browning, by invitation of a young black minister, attended the Wesley Chapel A.M.E. Church. Phoned threats of violence led her college president, Dr. Robert B. Lee, to coerce her into canceling a planned program with Wesley Chapel A.M.E.’s youth group. She attended the 1961 Paine College Student Christian Conference seeking understanding of the Methodist answer to the turmoil created by her attendance at a black church, and found Rev. James Lawson. She kept notes in a little black notebook of Rev. Lawson’s thoughts about the Christian response to racial segregation, as well as detailed notes about how to conduct direct action demonstrations. Her jail notes, little black notebook, and other papers from the freedom movement are housed in the African-American collection of Emory University’s Robert Woodruff Library Special Collections Department.

When she was forced to leave Georgia State College for Women, she moved to Atlanta in June 1961, discovered the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lecture in October 1961, and was one of nine Albany Freedom Riders on Dec. 10, 1961. She volunteered with SNCC on projects in Georgia and Alabama, attended college, and worked in the Emory University Library. She worked in human relations and anti-poverty programs throughout the 1960s and was an organizer of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives.

Now a freelance writer in West Virginia, she expresses the values that brought her to the Civil Rights Movement as a citizen supporting quality of life initiatives, children’s programs and libraries and is one of 100 West Virginians advising Gov. Cecil H. Underwood on implementation of his Initiative on Race, “One West Virginia 2000.”

She has taught contemporary ethics and lectures in a widening circle of colleges and universities using her personal experiences to discuss race, class, gender and the history of the South and of the Civil Rights Movement. Among her current projects is a biography of Rev. Joseph A. Rabun, fired from the pastorate of McRae Baptist Church in 1947 for his preaching and practicing of racial brotherhood in her childhood home of Telfair County, Ga.

More information about Browning and her work can be found at http://myweb.wvnet.edu/~oma00013/.

The Rose Gladney Lecture for Justice and Social Change was established in honor of retired UA faculty member Dr. Rose Gladney who worked tirelessly her entire career on behalf of both her students and social justice. She was fundamental in helping to craft the master’s program in women’s studies at UA, and was the recipient of the first Autherine Lucy Award for Service, Leadership and Support for Minority Programming at UA in 1987. In her research and scholarship, Gladney has advanced the causes she believes in. Her work on Lillian Smith is nationally and internationally known and has helped to restore Smith to the prominence she deserves on matters of race and gender.

The Hoole Library is located on the 2nd floor of Mary Harmon Bryant Hall, 500 Hackberry Lane on the UA campus. A reception will follow the talk and books by Browning and Gladney will be available for purchase and signing.

The event is co-sponsored by University Libraries, the College of Arts and Sciences, the African-American studies program, New College, and the departments of American studies, history, and women’s studies.