UD's McDuffie featured speaker in BAMS 'Brown Bag' presentation

2:36 p.m., Oct. 3, 2011--Erik S. McDuffie, associate professor at the University of Delaware, will be the featured speaker when the Department of Black American Studies (BAMS) "Brown Bag" lecture series continues from 12:15-1:10 p.m., Monday, Oct. 10, in 203 Munroe Hall.

McDuffie will speak on "Garveyism in the American Heartland: The Practice of Diaspora in the Urban Midwest."

Events Stories

June 5: Blue Hen 5K

University of Delaware graduates planning to attend Alumni Weekend are encouraged to register for the annual Blue Hen 5K walk and run, which will be held Sunday morning, June 5.

June 6-9: Food and culture series

The 20th annual June Lecture Series at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UD in Wilmington will be held June 6-9. Titled 'June a la Carte,' this year's program focuses on great political documents, feminism, world politics and a Newark cuisine sampler.

• June 6-9: Food and culture series
• Through June 30: 'Saving White Clay Creek'
• July 22: WWE Heatwave Tour
• Through Sept. 16: Women of color in academia

McDuffie's presentation rethinks the history of blacks in the urban Midwest, Black Power, and the African diaspora through recovering the complex history of the Garvey movement in the American heartland. 

Captivated by Jamaican Marcus Garvey’s message of race pride and black self-determination, thousands of working-class black people in Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago joined his transnational Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). At its peak in the early 1920s, the UNIA claimed 6 million members worldwide. 

Following Garvey’s death in 1940, the UNIA relocated its world headquarters to Cleveland, placing the city at the center of the transnational Garvey movement. Black Midwesterners came to see themselves through Garveyism as connected to the global African diaspora, with women playing a visible role in fostering these transnational linkages. 

Simultaneously, the UNIA recognized the Midwest as a central player in this worldwide black movement.

McDuffie is an associate professor in BAMS and the Department of History and the author of Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism, which has received the 2011 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians.

The "Brown Bag" series is free and open to the public. Each lecture is about 30 minutes and is followed by open discussion. Participants are welcome to bring their lunch and enjoy a vibrant and stimulating exchange of ideas. For more information on the series or any of the lectures, call the Department of Black American Studies at 302-831-2897.