Spring Break
Award-winning journalist visits campus
Talk links Civil Rights Movement to upcoming Inauguration
Elise Phillips, Assistant Pulse Editor
Issue date: 1/15/09 Section: News
|
Cobb's visit was sponsored by the Office of Institutional Diversity as a part of a series of events designed to remember Rev. King, and took place in the Science and Tech building on campus at 6 p.m.
Cobb, a one-time member of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, focused his speech on the parallels between the past and present, citing prominent members of the civil rights movement, many from North Carolina.
"North Carolina has been so important to the Civil Rights struggle," Cobb told the crowd of approximately 200 staff, faculty, students and members of the community. "Though I don't know if North Carolinians know this. There are figures all through North Carolina that have had a major impact on the Civil Rights Movement."
One of those civil rights activists was Littleton, N.C. native Ella Baker, who worked with King, Thurgood Marshall, Diane Nash and W.E.B. du Bois throughout her almost five decades of working toward a more equal United States, whom Cobb mentioned several times in his speech.
Cobb mentioned several parallels between the Civil Rights Movement and the ever-nearing Inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama on Jan. 20, citing that much of Obama's success can be linked to the movement that Cobb was a part of over four decades ago.
"Barack Obama's political achievement has its roots in that Civil Rights struggle," Cobb said, saying that the influx of young voters and community involvement in last year's election is similar to what was going on during the years when Rev. King "had a dream."
Cobb said that although many people have images of what the movement was like-"a mass movement of protests led by charismatic leaders," were his words-he says that much of the work was done by regular citizens fighting quietly in the nooks and crannies of the American South.
"Ordinary people that were normally spoken for began speaking for themselves," he said.
Cobb says that Obama's use of Facebook and other community organizing tools is a modern-day version of the community involvement that many Southerners took part in during the Civil Rights Movement.
Be the first to comment on this story