In the memory of many activists, the murder of Emmett Till sparked the Civil Rights Movement. In this lecture Professor Holt measures this story of the Movement’s origins against recent historical interpretations and explores the implications these alternative explanations may have for our understanding of how social movements are made.

A veteran of the civil rights movement with the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Thomas C. Holt is James Westfall Thompson Distinguished Service Professor of American and African American History at the University of Chicago. He earned BA and MA degrees at Howard University, followed by a PhD from Yale University in 1973. Professor Holt received MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships and served on the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. His latest book, Children of Fire: A History of African Americans, debuted in 2011. He was a faculty member at the University of Michigan in History and African and African American Studies from 1979 to 1988.

Professor Holt's lecture is free and open to the public and occurs in conjunction with the University of Michigan’s 29th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium.

The History Department’s 2016 Martin Luther King Symposium Lecture is presented by the Department of History and the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, with support from the Kalt Fund for African American and African History.