FEBRUARY 19, 5 P.M. TALK: “THE GATES OF OPPORTUNITY: LBJ, THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, AND AMERICA’S WAR ON POVERTY FIFTY YEARS LATER”

In an era when explosive police-community relations and widening income inequality regularly make the headlines, it is worth revisiting the turbulent years of the mid-1960s when the administration of President Lyndon Johnson sought to grapple with racial inequality and persistent poverty against the backdrop of urban riots, growing political polarization, and an increasingly unpopular war abroad.

About the speaker

David Carter, associate professor of history, has taught at Auburn since 2000. With research interests in the history of the civil rights movement, the history of the American South since the Civil War, and U.S. history since 1945, he is particularly drawn to the role of race and ideology in shaping American history. Carter is the author of The Music Has Gone Out of the Movement: Civil Rights and the Johnson Administration, 1965- 1968 (University of North Carolina Press, 2009), a study of the shifting relationships between the presidency of Lyndon Johnson and grassroots advocates of racial and economic equality following passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.