From Marching to Kneeling: The Evolution of Civil Rights
Jelani Cobb, staff writer at the New Yorker and professor of journalism at Columbia University, writes about the enormous complexity of race in America. In 2015, he received the Sidney Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism for his New Yorker columns for combining “the strengths of an on-the-scene reporter, a public intellectual, a teacher, a vivid writer, a subtle moralist, and an accomplished professional historian." He is also the recipient of the 2017 Walter Bernstein Award from the Writer’s Guild of America for his investigative series Policing the Police, which aired on PBS Frontline in 2016.
Cobb was formerly associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut, where he was director of the Africana Studies Institute. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright and Ford Foundations. He is the author of "Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress," "To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic," and "The Devil & Dave Chappelle and Other Essays." His forthcoming book is "Antidote to Revolution: African American Anticommunism and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1931."
Mr. Cobb is CMC's 2018 MLK Commemorative Speaker and his talk is co-sponsored by the President's Leadership Fund.