Flashback
45 years ago
UB holds first ‘discrimination’ symposium
The first “Discriminating about Discrimination” symposium was held at UB on March 20-21, 1964. With the support and involvement of President Clifford C. Furnas and the leadership of linguistics professor Henry Lee Smith Jr. and Episcopal chaplain R. Sherman Beattie, the symposiums in 1964 and the two following years assembled some of the leading figures in civil rights, sociology, psychology and religion to address “racial, sexual, economic and other forms of unjust discrimination.” Those who participated in the symposiums were challenged to “examine and reflect upon these complex issues so that one’s endeavors in the cause of justice may be wise and discriminating.”
Symposium participants included James Farmer, president of the Congress of Racial Equality and an organizer of the 1963 March on Washington; psychologists Kenneth Clark and Thomas Pettigrew; sociologists Arnold Rose and Frank Tannebaum; theologians John Burgess and M. Moran Weston; and theologian William Stringfellow (pictured right) and James Forman (left), executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and another organizer of the March on Washington.
Before the second symposium convened in April 1965, Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and with the civil rights bill then law, the second symposium focused on the racial schism that still existed.
“The Long-Term Process of Building Community” was the theme of the concluding symposium in April 1966. The complete proceedings of all three symposiums are available as an unpublished manuscript in the University Archives.
—John Edens, University Archives
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