EIHS Lecture: A Different Shade of Freedom: Civil Rights, Wide History, and the Post-WWII Transformation of Black Conservatism in America (Angela D. Dillard, University of Michigan), September 12, 2024

Civil rights historians have advocated long perspectives linking the post-WWII movement to previous eras. Dillard makes the case for wide frameworks to conceptualize ideological tensions within the Black political culture that sustained movement activism. A wide history, she contends, has ample room for African American critics who occupied center-to-right ideological positions. In aspiring to wideness she provides an entangled history foregrounding Black conservatives within debates—not only about strategies for change but also over the meanings of belonging and home—that shaped the movement, on the one hand, and impacted the evolution of American conservatism, on the other.

Angela D. Dillard is the Richard A. Meisler Collegiate Professor of Afroamerican & African Studies, and History. She specializes in American intellectual history, particularly around issues of race, religion and politics—on both the Left and the Right sides of the political spectrum. A former chair of the UM Department of History she currently serves as the university’s inaugural vice provost for undergraduate education—orchestrating strategic initiatives to enrich the academic experience of Michigan's 32,000+ undergraduate students—and is completing her third book, "A Different Shade of Freedom."

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.