On January 29, the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS), the Department of History, the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies (EIHS), and the Wallace House Center for Journalists came together to host an MLK Symposium: "Where Do We Go From Here?: Perspectives on Race, Democracy and Justice."
The event took place in the Helmut Stern Auditorium in the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and featured a conversation with Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, staff writer for the New Yorker, and MSNBC political commentator. Matthew Countryman, associate professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, American Culture, and History, opened the event and introduced the panel.
Cobb was joined on stage by Lynette Clemetson, journalist and director of U-M's Wallace House Center for Journalists, Angela Dillard, vice provost for undergraduate education and professor of Afroamerican and African Studies and History, and Stephen Ward, associate director of the Residential College and associate professor of Afroamerican and African Studies.
The conversation drew on Martin Luther King Jr.’s classic work, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community (1967), to explore the causes and challenges of the current political moment. Most powerfully, Cobb drew on his own experience growing up in Queens, New York, to unpack how the borough’s fraught racial and class politics shaped President Trump’s brand of white nationalism.
Photos courtesy of Andrew Mascharka, Michigan Photography, University of Michigan.
