2023 McPherson-Mitchell Lecture
The Clotilda, America’s Last Slave Ship, and Africatown, the Community the Survivors Built
The 2023 McPherson-Mitchell Lecture was funded, in part, by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Alabama Humanities Alliance
Monday, March 6, 6pm, Claudia Crosby Theater
Film Screening of Afrikan by Way of American and Discussion with Producer Theo M. Moore II (BS ’12, MS ’16)
Tuesday, March 7, 6pm, Claudia Crosby Theater (Reception at 5:30 in lobby)
Roundtable Discussion with:
Ben Raines: journalist; Author, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and
an Extraordinary Reckoning
Jeremy Ellis: President, Clotilda Descendants Association
Theo M. Moore II (BS ’12, MS ‘16): Executive Director, Hiztorical Visions Productions; Producer, Afrikan by Way of American
Stacye Hathorn: State Archeologist, Alabama Historical Commission
Walter Givhan: Alabama Historical Commission
Previous Lectures
2020
Kevin M. Levin
Freelance Professional Speaker, Independent Historian
Author of Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth
Southern History Lecture Series - TROY TrojanVision News
2019
Dr. Sylviane Diouf
Independent Historian
"The Clotilda, Africa Town, and Beyond"
2018
Dr. Hardy Jackson
Eminent Professor of History Emeritus at Jacksonville State University
"The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera"
2017
Dr. Deidra Suwanee Dees
Director and Tribal Archivist of the Office of Archives and Records Management, Poarch Band of Creek Indians
"Discovering Lost Treasures: The Muscogee Education Movement's Influence on Archival Acquisitions at the Poarch Band of Creek Indians"
2016
Dr. Arlene W. Keeling
PhD, RN, FAAN, University of Virginia, Centennial Distinguished Professor of Nursing and Assistant Director of the Eleanor Crowder Bjoring Center for Historical Nursing Inquiry
“Providing Care in the ‘Hoot Owl Hollers’: The Frontier Nursing Service, 1925-1950”
2015
Dr. James C. Cobb
B. Phinizy Spalding Professor History, University of Georgia
"The South is Where You Find It: Contours of Southern Identity, Old and New"
2014
Dr. Kenneth Noe
Draughon Professor of Southern History, Auburn University
"The Yellowhammer War: Revisiting Alabama's Civil War at the Sesquicentennial"
2013
Dr. Jennifer Garlan
Independent Scholar
"When Hollywood Whistles Dixie: A Celluloid History of the South"
2012
Dr. Raymond O. Arsenault
John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History, University of South Florida
"Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice"
Congressman John Lewis
U.S. Representative
"A Personal Experience The Freedom Rides"
2011
Dr. Paul Sutter
Professor, University of Colorado at Boulder
"Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Making Sense of Georgia's Little Grand Canyon"
2010
Dr. James L. Roark
Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of American History, Emory University
"Why the Confederacy Lost"
2009
Dr. Margaret Humphreys
Josiah Charles Trent Professor of the History of Medicine and Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Duke University
"The South's Secret Weapons: Disease, Environment, and the Civil War"
2008
Dr. Stephanie Yuhl
Associate Professor of History, College of the Holy Cross
"Memory Matters: Personal and Public Heritage in Charleston"
2007
Dr. Fred Bailey
Professor, Abilene Christian University
"After Populism: Redeemer History and Social Control in New South Alabama, 1890-1920"
2004
Dr. Wayne Flynt
Professor, Auburn University