Profs and Pints Online presents: “Urban Uprisings Then and Now,” with Ashley Howard, assistant professor of history and African American studies at the University of Iowa, former assistant professor of history at Loyola University New Orleans, and scholar of urban unrest in the 1960s.

Until recently the idea of another long, hot summer seemed an impossibility.  Violent protest belonged to an era more associated with bellbottoms and black berets than facemasks and PPEs.  Civil Rights activists got free, a black man sat in the Oval Office, and movie goers gleefully crossed their arms and yelled “Wakanda Forever!”  It seemed all good. Except it wasn’t.

The same grievances of police brutality and structural racism that African Americans took to the streets against in the 1960s remained stalwartly intact into the new millennium. And now, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, we’re once again seeing smoke rising from American cities as National Guard troops patrol their streets.

Come join Professor Ashley Howard for an interactive, online discussion of her scholarship on urban rebellions. Beginning with an overview of the 1960s uprisings, she’ll identify the complex ways that revolts constitute a murky brew of race, class, region, gender and political machinations.

She will address vexing questions like: “Is the Midwest best?” “How is an uprising like a chess game?,” “Where are the “lady rebels?” and “Whose streets are these really?”

With numerous American cities currently in the grip of violent protest, have the answers to these questions changed? What are the new questions we should be asking ourselves?

Professor Howard will share insights from her research on 1960s racial unrest in Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Omaha for her manuscript, Prairie Fires: Urban Rebellions as Black Working Class Politics in Three Midwestern Cities.  She will conclude by considering how the 2020 uprisings, while reminiscent of the 1960s, constitute an entirely new era in American protest.

Her talk might help point us in a direction where we can have both justice and peace.

Profs & Pints Online: Urban Uprisings Then and Now