Wednesday October 15, 2014
7:00pm – Brandywine Workshop, 728 S. Broad Street
The Underground Railroad, the Civil Rights Movement & Today
The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863 but that was just the tipping point. Emancipation was the result of a grass roots mass movement of more than thirty years and hundreds of people working the Underground Railroad, people struggling to free themselves and their neighbors. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 but the Civil Rights Movement was decades of hundreds of people struggling for their rights. There is a thread that runs through American history of people coming together to fight for their freedom and equality.
The Brandywine Workshop Gallery will have on display Despite the Law: Documentary Photographs of Struggle by Harvey Finkle and Robert Brand.
Discussion participants include :Phil Lapsansky who went to Mississippi for Freedom Summer from Seattle (then coming to Philadelphia to catalog the African American collection of the Library Company and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania); Larry Rubin went to Mississippi in 1964 and Bob Brand went in 1965 from Philadelphia (Bob took his camera and took lots of pictures, some of which will be on exhibit); Kim & Reggie Harris will sing songs of the Underground Railroad and the Civil Rights Movement; Joe Becton, Philadelphia historian and Underground Railroad Tour Guide, will join in the discussion on grass roots mass movements and what it means today.
