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The Second American Revolution, 1865-1870:
Putting Civil Rights Into the U.S. Constitution
The Department of History is pleased to co-sponsor this free, public, and timely lecture at the Bessie Smith Cultural Center on Monday, November 5th at 7:00pm. The speaker, Dr. Paul Finkelman, is a foremost scholar of American legal and constitutional history (as well as the president of Gratz College), and will be lecturing on “The Second American Revolution, 1865-1870: Putting Civil Rights into the U.S. Constitution.”
Join us Monday, November 5th at 7:00 p.m. at the Bessie Smith Cultural Center as we examine implications of the addition of civil rights to the U.S. Constitution during the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War. Our Fall Lecture Series, sponsored by Greg A. Vital, is free and open to the public.
Doors open at 5:00 p.m. and guests are invited to come early and explore the Civil Rights Amendments exhibit, created by the National Park Service, at the Chattanooga African-American Museum adjacent to the lecture hall. Refreshments will be offered.
National Park Partners would like to thank the National Environmental Education Foundation for supporting the “Centennial and Beyond” grant program, designed to bring National Park Service programming to new and diverse audiences. This lecture and exhibit mark the completion of our two-year partnership with the Bessie Smith Cultural Center, during which hundreds of residents and visitors have experienced the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park through programs hosted at BSCC.
Bessie Smith Cultural Center is located at 200 E. M.L.King Blvd. in downtown Chattanooga. Ample free parking is available adjacent to the building and on surrounding streets.
National Park Partners welcomes Dr. Paul Finkelman as the closing speaker for our 2018 Moccasin Bend Lecture Series.
Paul Finkelman is the President of Gratz College in greater Philadelphia. Before taking this position, he held the Fulbright Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice at the University of Ottawa School of Law, in Ottawa, Canada. He received his B.A. in American Studies from Syracuse University in 1971 and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago in 1976. He was later a Fellow in Law and Humanities at Harvard Law School. He has held a number of endowed chairs as a tenured professor or as a visitor, including the John Hope Franklin Chair in American Legal History at Duke Law School, Ariel F. Sallows Chair in Human Rights Law at the University of Saskatchewan, the President William McKinley Distinguished Professorship at Albany Law School, and the Chapman Distinguished Chair at the University of Tulsa Law School. He is the author of more than 200 scholarly articles and the author or editor of more than 50 books. His newest book, Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court, was published by Harvard University Press in 2018.