Delta Symposium XVII features Arkansas civil rights scholars Grif Stockley, Dr. John A. Kirk, Spirit Trickey, April 8
ASU - Jonesboro: Delta Symposium XVII features Arkansas civil rights scholars Grif
Stockley, Dr. John A. Kirk, Spirit Trickey, April 8
ASU's Delta Symposium XVII: The Delta in Print, Image, and Sound, features Arkansas
civil rights scholars Grif Stockley, Dr. John A. Kirk, and Spirit Trickey in a panel
discussion, "Why the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement is More Important
than the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War." The panel is slated for Friday, April 8, at
10 a.m. in the ASU Reng Student Services Center/Student Union, 101 N. Caraway
Road, Jonesboro.
Grif Stockley, writer and Fellow at the Butler Center of Arkansas Studies, Dr. John
A. Kirk, professor of History at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and Spirit Trickey,
park interpreter at Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site and Visitor
Center, will discuss civil rights history and activism in Arkansas.
Grif Stockley is the author of ten books, including four on Arkansas race relations. He
serves as a historical consultant to Arkansas school districts and as a consultant on a
death penalty project at the University of Texas Law School. At present, he is working
on a book about the 1959 fire at the Negro Boys Industrial School outside of Little
Rock in which twenty-one African American adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17
were burned to death. His topic for the symposium is the "The Arkansas Civil Rights
Movement: A Personal View."
Dr. John A. Kirk is chair and Donaghey Professor of History at the University of
Arkansas at Little Rock. He is author of numerous books, articles and essays on the
civil rights movement including the award-winning "Redefining the Color Line: Black
Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940-1970" (University Press of Florida, 2002).
His topic for the symposium is the Arkansas Freedom Rides, a direct action campaign
to end segregated transportation, which took place fifty years ago this year.
Since 2002, Spirit Trickey has been an interpretive park ranger/public information
officer and volunteer coordinator at the Little Rock Central High School National
Historic Site. She currently serves as acting chief of interpretation. At the symposium,
Trickey will discuss the National Park Service's theme, "Civil War to Civil Rights," to
commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. She will speak about the long road
to freedom and equality for African Americans in the U.S., leading up to the modern day
Civil Rights Movement, which peaked around the 100th anniversary of the Civil War
during the 1950s and 1960s. Trickey will also discuss the Constitutional Amendments
and Supreme Court cases that are directly linked to the Central High School
desegregation crisis, and she will talk about the importance of linking the Civil War and
the Civil Rights Movement to current-day issues of social justice.
Delta Blues Symposium XVII is sponsored by the Department of English and Philosophy
at ASU. For more information, contact symposium co-chair Dr. Gregory Hansen
(ghansen@astate.edu), Department of English and Philosophy, at (870) 972-3043, visit
the website http://altweb.astate.edu/blues/, or see ASU's NewsPage releases at
http://www.astate.edu/a/asunews/.
