Matt Jacobson and Robin D. G. Kelley explore the civil rights legacy of Sammy Davis Jr.

September 19, 2023

On September 19, 2023, Public Humanities and the New Haven Free Public Library brought our long-running Democracy in America conversation series back to an in-person format with Dancing Down the Barricades: Sammy Davis Jr & the Long Civil Rights Era, a conversation between Matthew Jacobson, co-director of the Public Humanities Program and the Sterling Professor of American Studies, History & African American Studies at Yale, and Robin D. G. Kelley, Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. Taking Jacobson’s recent book of the same name as its starting point, the conversation explored Davis’ complex relationship to the civil rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s and beyond.  We are pleased to share a full recording of the event on our YouTube channel. Stay tuned for future Democracy in America programs!

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