The 2022 ASALH Conference

Ending Racism USA will host daily sessions that are livestreamed from the The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) Annual Convention in Montgomery, Alabama to the Rust College campus in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

Session 1

Social Justice at ASALH with Bryan Stevenson, Equal Justice Today and Beyond, Howard/Mellon Social Justice Consortium Luncheon

Thu, Sep 29, 12:00 to 1:45pm CDT

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 135 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced.

Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge inequality in America, including the creation of the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice here at the conference site of Montgomery, both in 2018. These landmark institutions chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias.

Session 2

Fannie Lou Hamer's America – The Film

Fri, Sep 30, 8:30 to 10:00am

“Fannie Lou Hamer's America: An America ReFramed Special” explores and celebrates the lesser-known life of a Mississippi sharecropper-turned-human-rights-activist and one of the civil rights movement’s greatest leaders. Through the layering of audio recordings and archival video footage of her powerful speeches, soul-stirring songs and impassioned pleas for equal rights, Fannie Lou Hamer tells her extraordinary story in her own words. Watch the trailer.

Session 3

Southern State Legislation 2022: The Panic Over Critical Race Theory and the Future of Academic Freedom

Sat, Oct 1, 8:30 to 9:40am CDT

This panel will be a roundtable discussion about state legislation passed in 2022 by legislatures in the South that will threaten the teaching of structural racism, institutional racism, slavery, as well as critical race theory in public colleges and universities. The panel will focus on the Florida, Alabama, Virginia, and Mississippi legislation. The panel will discuss how these laws might interfere with the teaching of African American history as well as the threat this legislation might pose to academic freedom and first amendment rights of instructors in the classroom.