Faculty Highlight

Professional football player and activist Michael Bennett is used to crowds of thousands in stadiums. On March 11, he greeted a slightly smaller, but no less enthusiastic crowd in Richardson Auditorium at Princeton as he settled into a leather armchair.

Civil rights icon and scholar Angela Davis returned to her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, over the weekend. She originally planned the visit to receive the Fred L. Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, but the institute withdrew the award last month, soon after the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center sent a letter urging the board to reconsider honoring Davis due to her support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting the Israeli government and Israeli institutions. Facing swift and widespread outcry, the institute then reversed its decision and reinstated the award. But Angela Davis has yet to say if she will accept it. More than 3,000 people gathered Saturday evening for an alternative event to honor Davis hosted by the Birmingham Committee for Truth and Reconciliation. The event featured a conversation between Davis and Princeton professor Imani Perry, who is also from Birmingham.

Professors Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Jelani Cobb, Jamilah Lemieux, Mychal Denzel Smith, George Wallace, and Walter Naegle are here to remind you that Black History is American History and it doesn't fit in one tweet.