Exhibition Tour: American Sampler Activating the Archive with Stephen Ward
Professor Stephen Ward will lead a conversation about American Sampler: Activating the Archive. This research-driven, immersive exhibition in UMMA’s Vertical Gallery is a collaboration with the Joseph A. Labadie Collection of anarchism, protest, and social movements housed in the U-M Library’s Special Collections Research Center.
The exhibition centers on 1950s–1970s movements for Black freedom, civil rights, and antiwar activism, clarifying the aspirations and effects as well as the violent opposition these movements encountered. American Sampler invites visitors to examine how legacies of grassroots organizing and protest in U.S. history shape the present.
Free and open to the public, registration required.
More about Stephen Ward
Stephen Ward is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Associate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies and in the Residential College. He serves as Associate Director of the Residential College and Faculty Director of the Semester in Detroit Program. He is a historian and Black Studies scholar who teaches courses on black social movements and black radical thought, the history of student activism, the transformation of cities and black communities within them, the emergence of grassroots, community-driven visions of urban life, Detroit history, and the history of Hip Hop. A central focus of his scholarship is examining the lives, ideas, activism, and legacies of Detroit-based activists James and Grace Lee Boggs. He is the author of In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs (2016), and editor of Pages From a Black Radical’s Notebook: A James Boggs Reader (2021). He is also a long time member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership in Detroit.
SUPPORT
Lead support for this exhibition is provided by Joseph and Annette Allen, Nicole and Matthew Lester, Erica Gervais Pappendick and Ted Pappendick, Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Barbara Timmer, Susan and Richard Gutow, U-M Arts Initiative, U-M Institute for the Humanities, the Mary L. Wolter Welz Fund, and the Marvin H. and Mary M. Davidson Endowed Fund. Additional generous support is provided by U-M CEW+ Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund, U-M National Center for Institutional Diversity Inclusive History Project, U-M Department of History, and U-M Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies.
