Eye on Africa
Thu, February 20, 2025 12:00 PM - Thu, February 20, 2025 1:30 PM at International Center Room 201
Register HERE
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Benjamin Talton is the Director of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center and Professor of African and African Diasporia History at Howard University. He has published three books: The Politics of Social Change in Ghana: The Konkomba Struggle for Political Equality (Palgrave 2010); Black Subjects in Africa and its Diasporas: Race and Gender in Research and Writing (Palgrave 2011); and, most recently, In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics (Penn Press 2019), which won the 2020 Wesley-Logan Prize from the American Historical Association. Prior to his return to Howard University, Dr. Talton was a professor of African History at Temple University, Visiting Senior Lecturer at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, and assistant professor of History at Hofstra University. Dr. Talton is an editor of African Studies Review, the leading North American peer-reviewed African Studies journal, and he serves on the editorial board of American Historical Review, the top-ranked academic journal in NorthAmerica. He has published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and popular outlets,including The Washington Post, Jacobin, Current History, The Journal of Asian and African Studies, The African Studies Review, The Conversation, Ghana Studies, and Africa Is A Country. Most recently, he is a co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of African American History on "The Black 1980s."
ABOUT THE TALK
This lecture examines Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s role in the global movement against colonialism and racism, positioning him within an international network of leaders who adopted Gandhian nonviolent resistance. Drawing from King's writings, speeches, and correspondence with African independence leaders, it reveals how he viewed the American civil rights struggle as fundamentally connected to African liberation movements. The analysis highlights King's relationships with figures like Kwame Nkrumah and Kenneth Kaunda, his vocal opposition to apartheid, and his understanding that racial justice in America was inseparable from the broader fight against global white supremacy. This perspective challenges the domesticated image of King, revealing him as a global revolutionary who saw nonviolent direct action as a universal tool for dismantling systems of oppression worldwide.
Sponsored by the African Studies Center.