Resistance and Struggle Across Racial Regimes: Germany, South Africa, and the United States

Sponsored by: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies and the Gilder Lehrman Center. Co-sponsored by the Yale Education Studies Program, and the Amistad Committee, Inc.

Sterling Memorial Library SML, Memorabilia Room
120 High Street, New Haven, CT 06511
Thursday, May 18, 2023 • 3:00 to 8:00 pm 

In-person and live-streamed • register here

Using a comparative lens, this symposium examines resistance to the race-based legal orders and social hierarchies of Jim Crow United States, Nazi Germany, and apartheid-era South Africa. Beginning with a moderated panel discussion, three scholars will explore the history and memory of struggles against racialized social regimes, with attention to international inspiration, politics, and networking. This discussion will shed light on how actors in these different countries learned from other movements in developing tools of resistance and the roles such collective action played in dismantling oppressive racial regimes. The panel will address direct influences between nations, general parallels, as well as clear distinctions. Finally, the symposium will focus on contemporary pedagogical approaches for teaching the histories of these regimes (individually and in relation to each other) in classroom settings as well as in public history venues such as museums and historical sites.