UAB’s College of Arts & Sciences presents free ‘50 Years Forward’ events

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) College of Arts and Sciences will continue its year-long commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the U.S Civil Rights Movement with a month of free events and shows in September 2013. All events are free and open to the public.

Thursday, Sept. 5

Tim Pennycuff presents “Order in the Midst of Chaos: The Integration of the Medical Center at Birmingham,” 6-7:30 p.m. in UAB’s Mary Culp Hulsey Recital Hall, 950 13th St. South. Pennycuff, UAB’s university archivist, took the title of this talk from a letter written by the hospital administrator in 1963, who stated that the community needed “order in the midst of near chaos.” Many of those injured in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church were treated at University Hospital, and the four children killed on that September 1963 day were brought to the hospital for autopsy. Pennycuff will talk about the integration of the Medical Center during the years 1962-65. The largely peaceful changes that occurred in the Medical Center were a visible and marked contrast with those elsewhere in the city. He will highlight the work of faculty to end segregation policies in Birmingham and the state. Free and open to the public. Visit the UAB College of Arts and Sciences online at www.uab.edu/civilrights.

Tuesday, Sept. 10

Media Studies presents “Birmingham Movement: A Screening of Student Films,” 7-8:30 p.m.in UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, 1200 10th Ave. South. In spring 2013, UAB Media Studies students went into the Birmingham community to meet Civil Rights Movement leaders and foot soldiers. In a series of documentary films, they share their personal, intimate accounts of some of the most dramatic events of the 1950s and 1960s.The films to be screened: “Columns of Justice: Civil Rights Activism at Miles College” by Lacey Kennedy and Emmett Christolear; “Seeds of Hope” by Kaylyn Alexander, Xuxa Baptiste and Michael Locke; “The Klan Was the Law” by Clarence Lockett and Daniel Twieg; “Out of their Seats, Into the Streets” by Scott Hodnett and Amanda Khorramabadi; “Birmingham’s Boycott” by Nathan Ennis and Zoe Zaslawsky; “Transmission Freedom” by Bryan Bailey and Amber Taylor; and “Schism ‘63” by Nicholas Price. Free and open to the public. Visit the UAB College of Arts and Sciences online at www.uab.edu/civilrights.

Tuesday, Sept. 17

Keith D. Miller, Ph.D., “Rethinking the Civil Rights Movement: Why the National Memory is Wrong,” 7 p.m. in UAB’s Mary Culp Hulsey Recital Hall, 950 13th St. South. The UAB Department of English presents this lecture by Miller, associate professor of English at Arizona State University and the author of “Voice of Deliverance: The Language of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Its Sources” and “Martin Luther King’s Biblical Epic: His Final, Great Speech.” Free and open to the public. Visit the UAB College of Arts and Sciences online at www.uab.edu/civilrights.

Friday, Sept. 27-Thursday, Oct. 31

Bob Adelman: an exhibition of his Civil Rights photographs, in the UAB Visual Arts Gallery, 900 13th St. South. Presented by the UAB Department of Art and Art History, the exhibition will include a free opening reception with Adelman 5-9 p.m. Sept. 27 in the gallery. Adelman volunteered as a photographer for the Congress of Racial Equality in the early 1960s, a position that granted him access to many of the Civil Rights Movement’s key leaders, including Malcolm X, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin. The images from his show at UAB will focus on the “Children’s Crusade,” when on May 2, 1963, more than 1,000 African-American students skipped their classes and gathered at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church to march to downtown Birmingham. Students gathered again the next day, and Birmingham Police Commissioner Bull Conner directed police and fire departments to use force to stop the protests. Images of children and teens being blasted by fire hoses and attacked by police officers and their dogs appeared on television and in newspapers and triggered outrage around the nation and world. The catalogue for the show will present Adelman’s photographs along with essays by Representative John Lewis (D-Ga.), scholar and writer Charles Johnson, Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School Principal Sidney L. Moore and others. Free and open to the public. Visit the UAB College of Arts and Sciences online at www.uab.edu/civilrights.

Saturday, Sept. 28

“The Blues” and Bill Sims, Jr., 6:30 and 8 p.m. in UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, 1200 10th Ave. South. The UAB Department of Music will present a free screening of Martin Scorsese’s 2003 blues documentary film at 6:30 p.m. in the ASC Reynolds-Kirschbaum Recital Hall, followed by a musical performance by American blues musician Sims, with Mark Lavoie on blues harmonica, at 8 p.m. in the ASC Sirote Theatre. Sims, a guitarist and vocalist, plays a wide range of the blues, both electric and acoustic. A cultural ambassador for the blues, Sims played on the soundtrack of the film “American Gangster” starring Denzel Washington, and was a consultant on the set of “Cadillac Records,” a fictionalized film about Leonard Chess and Chicago’s famed Chess Label. Sims advised how to play in the old Mississippi style of Muddy Waters, and played guitar in some scenes. Both the film and performance are free and open to the public. Visit the UAB College of Arts and Sciences online at www.uab.edu/civilrights.