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THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS:
A CONVERSATION ABOUT
THE CASE AND ITS LEGACY

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 28 | 6:30 PM | FREE

Barnes & Noble Union Square
4th Floor Event Space
33 East 17th Street (Union Square North)

In conjunction with Vineyard Theatre's world-premiere production of Kander and Ebb's new musical, THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS, three leading scholars come together to discuss the historical context of the infamous "Scottsboro Case," its ramifications for the Civil Rights movement, and its legal legacies.

About the panelists

Dr. Kwando Mbiasso Kinshasa is the Chairperson of the John Jay College African American Studies Department and author of several books on migration and social violence. These works include: Emigration and Assimilation: The Debate in the African American Press, 1827, 1861 (McFarland, 1988); The Man from Scottsboro: Clarence Norris and the Infamous 1931 Alabama Trial, In His Own Words (McFarland, 2003); and Black Resistance to the Ku Klux Klan in the Wake of Civil War (McFarland 2006). Dr. Kinshasa was part of the Advisory Board for the 2001 production of the award winning film documentary Scottsboro: An American Tragedy. Dr. Kinshasa’s research into south/north migration and social conflict has resulted in the publication of a number of articles on African Caribbean migration in the 20th century particularly from such countries as Guyana and Surinam. One published article titled, “From Surinam to the Holocaust” (The Journal of Caribbean History, 2002), examined the relatively unknown history of Surinam anti-Nazi resistance fighters in Holland and the social psychological stresses of Surinam blacks in occupied Holland during World War Two. As an extension of his interest in migration and social conflict, his recently published African American Chronology: Chronologies of the American Mosaic (Greenwood Press, 2006) is a compilation of events and circumstances experienced by people of African ancestry within the American social and political construct. Dr. Kinshasa is presently researching the relationship of African American migration to the social construction of black criminality from 1865 to 1900.

James Goodman, professor of history and creative writing at Rutgers University, Newark, is the author of STORIES OF SCOTTSBORO (1994). The book received widespread critical praise -- Civil War historian James McPherson wrote that Goodman had invented "a new way of writing history”--and it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University facilitated his second book, BLACKOUT (2003), and he is currently deep into the writing of his third, the working title of which is, “I Wrote the Story of Abraham and Isaac.”

Dr. Carla Shedd is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Columbia University.  Shedd received her A.B. in Economics and African American Studies from Smith College and her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in June 2006.  Professor Shedd's research and teaching interests focus on: crime and criminal justice; race and ethnicity; law and society; social inequality; and urban sociology. She is currently finishing, Arresting Development,  a multi-method book project that examines two institutions that prominently shape the lives of urban youth: the public school system and the criminal justice system.