This weeks seminar given on Wednesday September 22, 2010 was given by Dr. Alton B. Pollard III . His lecture was entitled Civil Rights, Hip Hop, and Hope: The Power of Young People. His lecture focused overall on how the young people of the past, present, and future contribute greatly to the changes in the black community of America and also the world as well.
Dr. Pollard starts off by mentioning the Civil Rights Movement. I think we all learned that there was more to the civil right movement other that Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. The young people establishing sit ins in diners in Greensboro and Nashville contribute to the civil rights movement as well. However in 1958 Ronald Walters organized a sit in protest of a local drug store in Witchita, Kansas. This was one of the first major sit in before any others occurred. This sit in probably had some type of impact of later sit ins and movements.
The Dr. Pollard starts talking about some of the elders of the civil right movement. Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Rosa Parks, Joann Robinson, Correta Scott King, and Malcolm X just to name a few. These are some of the very important leaders of the Civil Rights movement when it was first starting out.
More towards the end of his lecture, Dr. Pollard talks about some of the Hip Hop artists of today. This is when he started to connect the young people of today to the civil rights movement. When I think of hip hop, I think of music that gets you "hype" forgetting about some of the other artists that actually have some meaning in their songs. For example KRS One, Chuck D, Lauryn Hill, Common, Talib Kweli, John Legend, Kem, Anthony Hamilton, and Angie Stone. These are some of todays present hip hop stars that have an actual message in their songs promoting change and human rights.
At the very end Dr. Pollard talks about Barack Obama saying that just having a black president in the White House is NOT enough. That the struggle is still going on. As stated in "Why" By Jadakiss ft. Anthony Hamilton. This song was released in 2004. This was only 5 years ago. His song is stating there is still a struggle going on in America.
On A side note, I looked up who Queen Mother Audley Moore Was. She was a very important figure in the civli rights movement. She was the founder of the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women as well as the Committee for Reparations for descendants of U.S. Slaves.
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