Buffalo, NY - Canisius University presents a talk by award-winning historian and writer Keisha N. Blain, PhD, on Tuesday, March 15, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. in the Montante Cultural Center. Her talk, which is free and open to the public, is titled “Fannie Lou Hamer and the Power of the Vote.” The event, presented under the auspices of the college’s William H. Fitzpatrick Chair of Political Science Lecture Series, will also be livestreamed here.
Blain is an associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh and a columnist for MSNBC. She is currently in residence at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University and a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study.
A 2022 New America National Fellow, Blain is a historian of the 20th century United States with broad interdisciplinary interests and specializations in African American history, the modern African Diaspora and women’s and gender studies.
Blain has published extensively on race, gender, and politics in both national and global perspectives. She is the author of the multi-prize-winning book, Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (2018), and co-editor of To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (University of Illinois Press, 2019); New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition (Northwestern University Press, 2018); and Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence (University of Georgia Press, 2016).
Her latest books are the #1 New York Times Best Seller Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, edited with Ibram X. Kendi (Penguin Random House/One World, 2021); and Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America (Beacon Press, October 5, 2021).
The Fitzpatrick Lecture Series at Canisius is part of the larger Fitzpatrick Institute of Public Affairs and Leadership at the college, which provides an array of opportunities for Canisius students to develop leadership potential through close contact with and exposure to those who contribute to American public affairs and societal issues.
The Institute and the Fitzpatrick Lecture Series are named for William H. Fitzpatrick, a South Buffalo builder and longtime chair of the Erie County Democratic Party. His sons, Paul E. and Walter D. Fitzpatrick, endowed the Fitzpatrick programming at Canisius in 1958, in memory of their father. A few years later, in 1962, the Hon. Harry S. Truman, 33rdpresident of the United States, inaugurated the Fitzpatrick Lecture Series at Canisius. Each year since, the college has hosted national figures in politics, government, academia and media, including Jane Goodall, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Bernice King, all under the auspices of the Fitzpatrick family.
For more information, please contact Richard A. Bailey, PhD, Fitzpatrick professor of history at (716) 888-2684 or @email.
One of 27 Jesuit universities in the nation, Canisius is the premier private university in Western New York. Canisius prepares leaders – intelligent, caring, faithful individuals – able to pursue and promote excellence in their professions, their communities and their service to humanity.
