Kerran Sanger, Ph.D., a nationally recognized scholar on African-American protest rhetoric and music, will present “We’ll Walk Hand in Hand: Protest Song and the Building of Community,” on Tuesday, Feb. 22, at 5 p.m. in McGuire Hall on Loyola University Maryland’s North Charles Street campus. The event is free and open to the public.
Sanger’s address will explore the ways in which the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s used spirituals to bind the members of the movement in common cause at sit-ins, mass demonstrations, Freedom Rides, and other nonviolent forms of civil disobedience, including a number of protests staged in Baltimore.
Chosen Generation, Loyola’s gospel choir, will lead the audience in singing some of the most famous Civil Rights Movement protest songs, including “We Shall Overcome,” “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” and “Oh, Freedom.”
Sanger, who recently retired as the associate dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at Buffalo State College in Buffalo, N.Y., is the author of When the Spirit Says Sing!: The Role of Freedom Songs in the Civil Rights Movement. She earned her Ph.D. in Speech Communication at Pennsylvania State University.
Her lecture is the second on the theme of “Communicating Injustice through Film and Music” presented by Loyola’s department of communication. Co-sponsors of the series include Education for Life, the office of student activities, the Center for Community Service and Justice, American studies, film studies, and African and African American studies.
For more information or questions regarding this story, contact Media Relations Manager Nick Alexopulos at nalexopulos@loyola.edu or 410-617-5025.