UofM's Hooks Institute Sponsors Lecture and Book Signing With Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Douglas Blackmon

October 28, 2015 - For decades after the abolition of slavery, business interests conspired with the Southern criminal justice system to imprison African-Americans through immoral practices as a means of filling the labor void. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, author Douglas A.

Blackmon explains how this practice continues to shape our nation today. Blackmon will discuss his findings at a lecture and book signing on Thursday, Nov. 19, at the Michael D. Rose Theatre on the University of Memphis campus. The event, which is sponsored by the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, begins with a reception at 5:30 p.m., followed by the lecture and book signing at 6 p.m. Copies of the book may be purchased from the University Bookstore.

The event is free and open to the public. Parking will be available in the Zach Curlin Street garage.

A native of Mississippi, Blackmon serves on the University of Virginia faculty and is a contributing editor at The Washington Post. He has written extensively about race in America over the past 30 years through his work as a journalist with The Wall Street Journal and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Slavery by Another Name grew out of an article he wrote on slave labor for The Wall Street Journal. In addition to receiving the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, the book was on The New York Times Best Seller List and was made into a PBS documentary of the same name.

Blackmon's appearance is co-sponsored by the Department of Social Work, Department of History, Department of Sociology and the Marcus Orr Center for the Humanities.

In 1996, University of Memphis officials received approval from the Tennessee Board of Regents to create the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change in the College of Arts & Sciences. The mission of the Institute is teaching, studying and promoting civil rights and social change. The Hooks Institute archives include Hooks' personal papers, which are housed in the Mississippi Valley Collection in the University's McWherter Library. To learn more about the Hooks Institute, visit memphis.edu/benhooks.

Contact: Daphene McFerren
901.678.3974