Book Event – The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement
Join Hajar Yazdiha, Varun Soni, Walter J. Nicholls, and Marcus Anthony Hunter as they discuss Dr. Yazdiha’s new book The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement.
Thursday, October 5th, 2023
5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
USC University Club Scriptorium
In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women’s rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim the collective memory of civil rights to portray themselves as the newly oppressed minorities.
In The Struggle for the People’s King, Hajar Yazdiha reveals how, as these powerful groups remake collective memory toward competing political ends, they generate offshoots of remembrance that distort history and threaten the very foundations of multicultural democracy. Powerful and persuasive, The Struggle for the People’s King demonstrates that these oppositional uses of memory fracture our collective understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we go next.
Reclaiming the Legacies of the Civil Rights Movement #ThePeoplesKing Recording
On Thursday, October 5, we celebrated Professor Hajar Yazdiha’s latest book The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement with Dr. Varun Soni, UCI Professor Walter J. Nicholls, and UCLA Professor Marcus Anthony Hunter. Watch the recording of the event below or on YouTube!