Past & Present:
A Gathering With Freedom Movement Veterans
At Stanford University

Saturday April 11th, 2015
9:00 AM - 3:30 PM

Please RSVP Now

Co-sponsored by the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute and Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, with support from the Stanford University Library.

Purpose: Civil rights veterans gather to share stories and insights from the Freedom Movement, explore how fear and courage affected their social activism and personal life, how family influenced and was impacted by, movement participation, and how lessons learned in the past apply to today. The discussions will be recorded, preserved and made available to participants and researchers. A day of music, history and discovery.

Stanford students & activists, and scholars of Civil Rights, Political Science, History, African American, Chicano-Latino and other Ethnic studies and Gender studies will also be invited to participate.

Breakfast and lunch will be provided. Vets are guests; others will be charged cost.

Program:

900-1000 Gather, shmooze, Continental breakfast.
1000-1030 Singing and welcome.
1030-1200   Veterans introduce themselves, saying when, where, and with whom they worked. If time allows, self-introductions by others in attendance.
1200-100 Lunch, socializing and book signings.
The nearby King Institute will be open for those who wish to visit it.
We hope to have space where vets can place literature about their current activities.
100-300 Group discussions (see below)
300-330 Closing events & singing.
330-400 Clean up (please help!)

After the event, Movement veterans and guests may want to share an early dinner at a nearby venue.

 

"THEN AND NOW" — The Group Discussions

Each group will discuss ONE of the following three topics.

  1. Fear, commitment & courage
  2. Movements and our families
  3. Lessons learned from the Freedom Movement

In each group everyone will speak on the topic for up to 4 minutes. After everyone has had a turn, general discussion and responses are limited to 2 minutes per person. (The facilitators will ask for someone with a smart-phone to do the timing.) The goal of these discussions is to share a full range of ideas and thoughts, with no group consensus, conclusion, or position.

Note that unlike last year, the discussion groups won't be limited to Freedom Movement veterans. They will be open to invited guests including Stanford students and faculty.

The morning introductions and afternoon group discussions will be audio recorded, and we hope to be able to video-tape the morning session. Transcripts and/or the actual recordings may be posted on Stanford or Institute websites or the CRMVets (crmvets.org) website as we have done with group discussions in the past. Before a transcript is posted on the CRMVets site, each participant can edit, delete, or expand their own contributions.

The event is free and open to all. However vets & vet's guests *MUST* RSVP in advance by e-mailing: Bruce Hartford at: bruceh@crmvet.org. The event location on campus and directions will only be sent to those who RSVP.

Please include the following information in your RSVP:

Hope you can make it!

Bruce Hartford
Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement