Talks at the Schomburg: David Blight and Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Event Details

One of the most forgotten elements of the Civil Rights Movement is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s efforts to get President John F. Kennedy to write a "Second Emancipation Proclamation." Read more about King's Forgotten Manifesto (New York Times, May 16, 2012), in which he argues for an executive order that would ban segregation in the same way the Emancipation Proclamation outlawed slavery. Take part in an engaging discussion between professor and authors David Blight and Khalil Gibran Muhammad as they discuss this fascinating history in celebration of MLK’s birthday.

David W. Blight is Professor of American History at Yale University and Director of the Gilder-lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. His latest book is American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library. He is a former professor of African-American history at Indinana University and author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern America.