The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement

The Sixteenth Annual Diane Jennings Seminar will be held on Tuesday, April 21 at 2 p.m. in the Jim Cherry Lecture Hall of the JCLRC on Clarkston Campus. This year’s speaker will be Susan Youngblood Ashmore, Associate Professor of History at Oxford College of Emory University. She will be discussing her book:

Carry It On: The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 1964—1972

Carry It On is an in-depth study of how the local struggle for equality in Alabama fared in the wake of new federal laws—the Civil Rights Act, the Economic Opportunity Act, and the Voting Rights Act. Professor Ashmore focuses on the Alabama Black Belt and on the local projects funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity, the federal agency that supported programs in a variety of cities and towns in Alabama. Professor Ashmore looks closely at the interactions among local activists, elected officials, business people, landowners, bureaucrats, and others who were involved in or affected by OEO projects. The result is a nuanced picture of the OEO, an agency too broadly criticized; a new look at the rise of southern Black Power; and a compelling portrait of local citizens struggling for control over their own lives.

I hope you can attend and encourage your students to attend. (A little extra credit is always a good incentive.) This event is sponsored by the Business and Social Sciences Department, the Honors Program, and the History and Politics Club. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at 678-891-3298.


Susan M. McGrath
Professor of History
Georgia Perimeter College
Clarkston Campus
555 North Indian Creek Drive
Clarkston, GA 30021-2396
678-891-3298 (Office)
678-891-3084