Civil Rights History in Clarksdale
Book Signing with Author – Tuesday, September 18, 2012
(Indianola, MS) – The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center is pleased to present a book signing on Tuesday, September 18th at 2:00 p.m. in Lucille’s Gift Shop. Author Françoise N. Hamlin will talk about and sign her book Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta after World War II. Books will be available for purchase. Weaving national narratives from stories of the daily lives and familiar places of local residents, Hamlin chronicles the civil rights movement in Coahoma County, Mississippi from 1951. She paints a full picture of the town over fifty years, recognizing the accomplishments of its diverse African American community and strong NAACP branch and examining the extreme brutality of entrenched power there. Following the black freedom struggle in Clarksdale from World War II through the first decade of the twenty-first century allows Hamlin to tell multiple, interwoven stories about the town’s people, their choices, and the extent of political change. She shows how members of civil rights organizations worked to challenge Jim Crow through fights against inequality, police brutality, segregation, and, later, economic injustice.
Françoise N. Hamlin received her Ph.D. at Yale University in 2004 and is the Hans Rothfels Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
For more information, please contact:
Dr. Dina Bennett, Director of Education
662-887-9539 Ext. 227
dbennett@bbkingmuseum.org
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