In a year in which we mark both the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, we can reflect on the factors that shaped these pivotal events in American history. In her talk, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham will explore the ways that religion permeated the vernacular of the abolitionist and civil rights movements.

Higginbotham is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American studies at Harvard University. She is currently chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and has held this position since 2006. The recipient of numerous awards for her scholarly work, Higginbotham's writings span diverse fields—African American religious history, women's history, civil rights, constructions of racial and gender identity, electoral politics, and the intersection of theory and history. She is the author of "Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920" (1993), which won numerous book prizes. She is also coeditor with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of the "African American National Biography" (2008), a multivolume reference work that presents African American history through the lives of people. In 2010 she was coauthor with the late John Hope Franklin of the revised and rewritten classic "From Slavery to Freedom". This year, as the John Hope Franklin Fellow at the Center, she is working on "The Great Question of Human Rights in American History". She was previously a Fellow at the Center in 1993–94.