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Videos - Conference and Keynote Speakers

Dr. J. Q. Adams, Educational and Interdisciplinary Studies, has conducted interviews with scholars and activists whose work has advanced the understanding of cultural diversity in the USA. Each of the  interviewees offers insights into diversity based on their research and experience.

               Dr. Shakti Butler 

 

               Dr. Heather Hackman

 

               Dr. Maulana Karenga

 

               Dr. Pedro Noguera

 

               Dr. Ronald Takaki

 

               Dr. C. T. Vivian

 

               Mr. Tim Wise

 

 

Rev. C. T. Vivian (SpeakOutNow.org)

Rev. C. T. Vivian:  "Nonviolence is the only alternative to violence in our time."  Quoting Walt Whitman (from Leaves of Grass):  "'Every struggle makes a greater struggle necessary.'  That's a deep truth."

Rev.C. T. Vivian, in this interview with Dr. J. Q. Adams at Western Illinois University, discusses his participation in the Civil Rights Movement: lunch-counter sit-ins in Peoria, IL and Rock Hill, SC; seminary studies and nonviolent direct action training in Nashville, TN; the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Wade-in in St. Augustine, FL; Freedom Rides through the South and imprisonment in the State Penitentiary in Jackson, MS.

Rev. Vivian speaks of civil rights leaders with whom we worked, including Rev. Martin Luther King, Rev. James Shuttlesworth, Rev. James Bevel, Dr. James Farmer, and Rev. James Lawson, and others in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  He also speaks passionately of nonviolence as the only viable means to effect social justice, of the preparation and motivation that prevented fear from ever becoming a factor in his quest for racial equality, and of the necessity for strong, in-depth education in the development of leaders who understand and embrace nonviolence as the response to violence.