This talk traces the roots of the modern civil rights movement to World War II, a movement that began long before the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 and lasted long after Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis in 1968, a movement that in many ways never ended. Specifically, Dr. Luckett discusses the major people and events of the modern civil rights movement in Mississippi like Emmett Till; Medgar and Myrlie Evers; Ross Barnett; the Citizens’ Council and the Sovereignty Commission; the Freedom Rides; James Meredith and the 1962 integration of Ole Miss; the 1963 Woolworth’s sit-in; leading civil rights organizations like the Council of Federal Organizations, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the NAACP; 1964 Freedom Summer; Fannie Lou Hamer; the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party; Anne Moody and Coming of Age in Mississippi; the Meredith March against Fear; and many other topics in the field.
As a Civil Rights historian, Dr. Luckett’s expertise is on the modern Civil Rights Movement and the African-American experience. As director of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, Dr. Luckett has become an expert on Walker’s life and her experiences, especially as they related to the Black Arts Movement of the 20th century.
