The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute will welcome scholars from all over the country to participate in a three-day conference focusing on differences and similarities between civil and human rights. A Single Struggle? The Global Convergence of Civil and Human Rights will examine how civil and human rights are defined, as well as societal attributes that have evolved into the accepted differences separating civil rights from human rights.  The conference will take place April 30 - May 2, 2008 at BCRI.  

All too often, the scholarly perspective is that a Civil Rights Movement (as in the American social movement of the 1950's and 1960's) is distinctly different from non-Western freedom struggles that take place in other parts of the world within distinctly non-Western cultures. The resulting analysis of such events does not allow the similarities of human struggle to define or influence the impact of what is undertaken by those individuals.    Many scholars consider civil rights to be those liberties bestowed by nations on citizens within their territorial borders, while human rights are rights individuals possess by virtue of membership in the human race. Invited scholars will address these and other issues relating to the similarities among human struggles in the international arena.
 
Several sessions are planned over the three-day period.  Featured speakers will include Carolyn Maull McKinstry, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Trustee and survivor of the bombing in 1963; Doug Shipman, Executive Director of Atlanta's Center for Civil and Human Rights Partnership; and Dr. Lewis Baldwin, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of African American Studies at Vanderbilt University.  Baldwin is also author of Toward The Beloved Community:  Martin Luther King, Jr. and South Africa (1995). 
 
Registration for the conference is $60 and space is limited.  Twenty scholarships are available on a first-come, first-served basis.  For more information, call (866) 328-9696, ext. 215.

Mark Your Calendar

Click here to download a Conference Registration Scholarship Form. >>  Applications due April 10.

Mail form to:                     Laura Caldwell Anderson 520 Sixteenth Street N. Birmingham, AL  35203