Joshua Myers presents "We Are Worth Fighting For: A History of the Howard University Student Protest of 1989"
This event has already happened.
Wednesday, January 29th 2020
7:00 pm
Red Emma's
Update: Joshua Myers will be joined by Anson Asaka, Associate General Counsel for the NAACP, who was a student organizer helping lead the 1989 Howard protest.We Are Worth Fighting For is the first history of the 1989 Howard
University protest. The three-day occupation of the university’s
Administration Building was a continuation of the student movements of
the sixties and a unique challenge to the politics of the eighties.
Upset at the university’s appointment of the Republican strategist Lee
Atwater to the Board of Trustees, students forced the issue by shutting
down the operations of the university. The protest, inspired in part by
the emergence of “conscious” hip hop, helped to build support for the
idea of student governance and drew upon a resurgent black nationalist
ethos. At the center of this story is a student
organization known as Black Nia F.O.R.C.E. Co-founded by Ras Baraka, the
group was at the forefront of organizing the student mobilization at
Howard during the spring of 1989 and thereafter. We Are Worth Fighting
For explores how black student activists—young men and women— helped
shape and resist the rightward shift and neoliberal foundations of
American politics. This history adds to the literature on Black campus
activism, Black Power studies, and the emerging histories of African
American life in the 1980s."We Are Worth Fighting For reminds us of the insurgency of
Black college students in the late 1980s and early 1990s that inspired a
generation. Thoroughly researched and well constructed, this book
illuminates how Howard students inspired the political and cultural
rebellion of the time and shines light on this period of the Black
freedom struggle."
~Akinyele Umoja, author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement"This riveting, exceptionally well-written book is a major contribution
to Black Power historiography and the history of Black student activism.
Featuring appearances by future mayors of Newark and Atlanta and
pioneers of hip hop, this study holds important lessons for today."
~Gerald Horne, author of Fire this Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s