PULLMAN – Dr. Stefan Bradley, historian and WSU alumnus, will present a talk titled “College Kids, CORE, Cats, and Cooler College Curriculum: The 1960s Black Freedom Movement” at the WSU campus in Pullman, Wash., during Black History Month.
The presentation will be given at 4 p.m. Feb. 7 in the Smith Center for Undergraduate Education, room 202. The event is free and open to everyone.
Bradley will speak about the role that young people and students in the 1960s played in changing the course of national history.
“By way of sit-ins, demonstrations, marches, radical rhetoric, and other forms of protest, these young people shook the nation to its core,” Bradley said. According to Bradley, their actions inspired new legislation, enriched college curriculums, and changed the culture of the United States and the world.
“Because they were young and impatient, they moved quickly to advance the Black Freedom Movement,” Bradley said. “Furthermore, they did so without the direct leadership of men like Martin Luther King Jr., which is not only remarkable, but it is telling about the power that young people have when they focus.”
Bradley, who is currently researching black student activism at Ivy League universities, received his master’s degree in history from WSU in 1998 and his doctoral degree in history from the University of Missouri, Columbia, in 2003. He holds a tenure-track position in the department of historical studies at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville.
