Historian who Chronicled Black Panther Party’s Alabama Roots Featured

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The University of Alabama’s Graduate History Association is hosting its 10^th annual “Power and Struggle Conference” featuring noted American historian Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries as its keynote speaker.

The first day of the two-day conference will feature Jeffries’ keynote address at Smith Hall Oct. 5 at 7 p.m. It is free and open to the public.

The second day of the conference features panels composed of graduate history students from around the country. It takes place Oct. 6 at ten Hoor Hall from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and requires registration the morning of the event.

“For the past nine years the Graduate History Association at UA has hosted this conference,” said Malcolm Cammeron, a second year master’s student in history and president of the Graduate History Association. “We always strive to develop diverse panels that reflect a range of historical thought and make an effort to bring in prominent historians from various subfields that graduate students would want to come and hear speak.

“This year we’re excited to bring Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries, noted scholar of twentieth-century African American history to the Capstone,” said Cammeron. “He wrote a well-received book titled “Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt” about the Civil Rights Movement in Wilcox County. This is the county where the Black Panther Party was born, which was originally a voter’s party in Wilcox County and became the Black Panther Party we knew it as in Oakland, Calif.”

Jeffries is an associate professor of history at Ohio State University in Columbus and a former Bankhead Fellow in UA’s history department where he taught American history and African American history.

He hosts the “Teaching Hard History” podcast where he and other scholars discuss slavery and its common myths. Recently, he served as the lead historian and script writer for the multi-million dollar renovation of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.

Cammeron said the goal of the Graduate History Association is to host the yearly graduate history conference, provide professional development workshops and serve as a social organization for graduate history students.