Emancipation and the Laws of War (Yale University)

James Oakes and John Witt talked about their books on the process of Emancipation during the Civil War. James Oakes argued that contrary to conventional narratives, the destruction of slavery was a Republican goal from the beginning of the war. John Witt spoke about the world’s first pamphlet style “laws of war” code written by Lincoln advisor and legal scholar Francis Lieber in 1862 and 1863. Witt argued that the “Lieber Code” was written to help justify emancipation as a military necessity, and that the code has been a source for international laws of war ever since. The discussion was moderated by David Blight.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?312015-1/emancipation-laws-war

David W. Blight at the NYS Writers Institute in 2012

The featured speaker for the 2012 Researching New York Conference, David W. Blight will present a lecture, "America Divided, Then and Now: The Civil War in our National and Local Imagination." One of the foremost authorities on the U.S. Civil War, Blight is Professor of American History and Director, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. He has authored numerous works including, most recently, American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (2011) and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2002).

Defining Slavery (GLC 14th Annual International Conference, Yale University)

A panel of professors and authors talked about the legal, economic, academic and policy frameworks that help define modern day slavery and human trafficking.

This panel is part of the Gilder Lehrman Center’s 14th Annual International Conference.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?309205-3/defining-slavery

Roots of Modern Day Slavery (GLC 14th Annual International Conference, Yale University)

November 9, 2012

Historians discuss 18th and 19th Century analogs and their relationships to contemporary slavery and abolition, as well as “white slavery” and the emphasis on human rights in the 20th Century.

This panel is part of the Gilder Lehrman Center’s 14th Annual International Conference (1st day of conference)

http://www.c-span.org/video/?309205-2/roots-modern-day-slavery

2012 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards (Ohio Theater, Cleveland )

The 77th annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards were presented to “books that have made an important contribution to society’s understanding of racism and diversity of human cultures.” Jury Chair Henry Louis Gates, Jr. presented a lifetime achievement award to Arnold Rampersad, humanities professor at Stanford University and author of biographies of Ralph Ellison and Langston Hughes. Awards are also given for non-fiction, David Blight, American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era and David Livingstone Smith, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others and for fiction, Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues: A Novel. The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards were held at the Ohio Theatre in Cleveland.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?308485-1/2012-anisfieldwolf-book-awards

Is the Civil War the Revolution We Like to Forget? (Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, Case Western Reserve University)

David Blight | Campus, Case Western Reserve University

King’s Forgotten Manifesto | The New York Times (The Opinion Pages)

ON May 17, 1962, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an extraordinary manifesto to the White House. Constructed as both a moral appeal and a legal brief, the 64-page document called on President John F. Kennedy to issue a “second Emancipation Proclamation,” an executive order outlawing segregation — just as President Abraham Lincoln had done with slavery a century earlier...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/opinion/kings-forgotten-manifesto.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3As