Event

The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Speaker Series

  • Multiple Days: 01/25/2018, 02/22/2018, 03/29/2018, 04/11/2018, 05/31/2018 Location: Henry A. Wallace Visitor and Education Center, | Map Time: 5:30 PM Fee Information: FREE Contact Name: Frank Futral Contact Email: E-Mail Us Contact Phone Number: 845-229-1948
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    Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated their lives to the relief of human suffering in the United States and abroad. Many problems that plagued their era still trouble our world. This series of programs will look to the past and the future to seek wisdom and inspiration from the collective human experience in the historic and modern day struggles for justice. Our aim is to enrich the public knowledge and understanding of this story by highlighting individuals—past and present—who are committed to the protection of human dignity in large and small ways. The speaker series will include lectures, panel discussions, film screenings, and performances presented by historians, park rangers, activists, artists, and entrepreneurs. The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Speaker Series is co-sponsored by the National Park Service and the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt Historical Association. All programs will be held at the Henry A. Wallace Visitor Center. 

     

    The Civilian Conservation Corps: A New Deal for Some

    Thursday, January 25, 5:30 pm

    Kevin Oldenburg, National Park Service

    It may be a stretch to link the Civilian Conservation Corps and Human Rights, but in all reality there is a pretty strong correlation between the two. We see the basic Human Rights afforded to the young men who were employed by the CCC, but also the segregation of these camps based on race, color, creed, and gender. While we look at the CCC and successes it had, we can also look at some of the shortcomings as well.

    Kevin Oldenburg has been a National Park Ranger at Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites for over 16 years. He conducts tours of the 4 homes, leads guided hikes, delivers offsite talks for numerous groups and organizations, and is often tasked with conducting VIP tours for the many high profile dignitaries that visit the sites. Kevin is also is federally trained Wildland Firefighter and has been mobilized 5 times to the Western states to assist with fire suppression efforts. He also helps locally with prescribed burns in parks.

     

    Eleanor Roosevelt and Civil Rights

    Thursday, February 22, 5:30 pm

    Shannon Butler, National Park Service

    This presentation illustrates Eleanor Roosevelt's relationships with various Civil Rights leaders from the White House years up until her death. It goes over some of the major events that she was involved in or at least took interest in helping with during this span of time, taking a look at how she used the power of her position to help a cause she felt strongly for.

    Shannon Butler has served as a Park Guide with the National Park Service for over 7 years. She has worked at various other historic sites and historical societies for over 12 years. She earned degrees in History from SUNY New Paltz and the University at Albany. She is currently serving as the Municipal Historian of the Town of Hyde Park.

     

    Votes for Women: Celebrating New York’s Suffrage Centennial

    Thursday, March 29, 5:30

    Jennifer Lemak and Ashley Hopkins-Benton, New York State Museum
    Votes for Women celebrates the centennial of women’s suffrage in New York State and raises public awareness of the struggle for women’s suffrage and equal rights in New York State from the 1848 Seneca Falls Conven­tion through 1917 when New York State granted women the right to vote. Lemak and Hopkins-Benton address the nationally significant role of New York State leaders in regards to women’s rights and the feminist movement through the early 21st century.

    Jennifer Lemak is Chief Curator of History at the New York State Museum. Ashley Hopkins-Benton is a Senior Historian and Curator at the New York State Museum. They both co-curated the Votes for Women exhibit at the New York State Museum and co-authored the accompanying catalog.


    The American Civil Rights Movement and the Soviet Union

    Wednesday, April 11, 5:30 pm

    Michael Zwelling, National Park Service

    During the Cold War the United States struggled to gain the moral high ground of freedom and democracy because of the racial prejudice that existed in the nation. The Soviet Union, often portrayed in America as the antithesis of freedom, used the duality of freedom and prejudice in the United Sates as a stepping stone to aid its world image. Learn about this struggle between the two superpowers and how the conflict of racism and freedom was dealt with during the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
     

     


    African American Civil Rights Leaders and the Roosevelts

    Thursday, May 31, 5:30 pm

    Kevin Burke and Steven Niven, Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University

    Few periods in American history have been as profound or consequential as the New Deal, Second World War, Cold War, and Civil Rights Movement, years defined by the Roosevelt presidency and its animating legacy in the decades that followed. From the grass roots to the national and international stage, African American leaders serving overseas and at home, and in every field from the arts to business, journalism to education, law to politics, science to sports, would play a pivotal part in the struggle, pressing Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt to narrow the gap between American ideals and action, working with them to effectuate change, speaking out when they fell short, and making sacrifices and strides to fulfill what the President, in the midst of the Depression, had called their generation’s “rendezvous with destiny.”

    Kevin Burke is a native of Newburgh, New York. Kevin is Director of Research at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. A graduate of Harvard Law School with a Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, Burke was co-author with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of the companion book to the PBS Series, Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise, and has served as Director of Research/Senior Historical Adviser on Gates’s PBS series, Finding Your Roots and Africa’s Great Civilizations.

    Steven Niven is an expert on the Civil Rights Movement who for years has edited some of the nation’s leading encyclopedic and biographical resources on African and African American history, including the African American National Biography. He is Executive Editor for Dictionary of African Biography, African American National Biography, and Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography.