MyStory Griot Project: Desegregation in the South with Dr. Steve Brown
December 5, 2021 | CASSH Communications | casshcommunications@uwf.edu
“Growing up in the South during that period of desegregation, I was vaguely aware of tensions throughout the nation. But, all those problems seemed to be a world away...They were loud, boisterous, and probably academically challenged, everything I had been taught not to be...On the other hand, they also generally possessed the two things that in my view made them semi-deities: They had cars and they had girlfriends, and I had neither of those and the prospects were bleak."
Dr. Steve Brown is dean of the UWF College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. Brown shares a personal encounter during Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination. His story is positioned against the backdrop of the South's desegregation era.
"Waiting to warm up and standing around with other students, I heard that door burst open and one of those tough high-school guys yelled across the room to a friend, 'The son of a bitch is dead!'...Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of nonviolence in the Civil Rights Movement had been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee...It didn’t take long for us all of us to understand that Dr. King had been shot and killed just a little ways from where we stood.”
Brown shares how his encounter with racial tensions during the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King shaped his understanding of the importance to speak out against such tensions.
The MyStoryGriot Project is an initiative of the UWF CASSH Workgroup on Race, Ethnicity and Belonging. To learn more, visit uwf.edu/casshbelonging. To learn more about the UWF College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, visit uwf.edu/cassh.
- Dr. Steve Brown
- MyStory Griot Project: Desegregation in the South
- uwf.edu/casshbelonging
- uwf.edu/MyStoryGriot
