In his brief talk, Evan Faulkenbury PhD, associate professor of history at SUNY Cortland NY, will share his personal background story asking the question, “Why didn’t I learn that history?” and explaining how his private evangelical education ignored the history of racism in America. Faulkenbury grew up in North Carolina, and his K-12 experience occurred through private, evangelical Christian schools. It was only when he went to graduate school to study U.S. history that he began to understand African American history, the Civil Rights movement, and the historical legacy of racism that continues today. Dr. Faulkenbury will share a bit about his scholarly research and how it is rooted in his desire to help others realize this history sooner than he did. His courses and research focus on the Civil Rights movement, public history, and United States history. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016. His book, Poll Power: The Voter Education Project and the Movement for the Ballot in the American South, tells the story of a behind-the-scenes civil rights organization that funded hundreds of grassroots Black American registration campaigns during the 1960s and 1970s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjpBIQSGRuI
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