Posted - October 4, 2010

Civil rights movement topic of Oct. 26 lecture

Arthur Greenberg to discuss involvement in summer of ‘64

Eureka College lecturer in business administration and criminal justice Arthur Greenberg will present "Witness to a Savage Summer: 1964 and the Struggle for Freedom" at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 26 in the Cerf Center at Eureka College. A reception will follow.

The free, public presentation will discuss Greenberg's involvement with civil rights activities at the height of the civil rights movement and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“The Sixties were more than a decade of ‘The Age of Aquarius,’ ‘The Feminine Mystique,’ Rachel Carson and the moon landing,” Greenberg said. “It also was a period of violence, assassinations, Vietnam, student unrest, public riots and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.” 

In 1964, Greenberg was 35-years-old and a member of the Congress of Racial Equality, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee. He was among those who volunteered to go to the southern United States to assist people to register to vote and, when necessary, advise them of their legal rights, he said.  

“The day that I left in July, the bodies of three civil rights workers were found in a swamp in Mississippi, and others were harassed and threatened in the South by the police, white citizen councils and others with racist agendas.  Restaurants, hospitals, public facilities and state courtrooms were still segregated, and I was told by one judge not to sit with black people in the back of the courtroom,” Greenberg said.  “Those were frightful yet hopeful times.  My lecture is my story of those times.”

Greenberg is a former prosecutor, former resident circuit judge of Peoria County, past president of the Peoria County Bar Association and a trained mediator. In 2007, he was recognized for 50 years of membership in the Illinois State Bar Association, earning the honorary title of senior counsellor. He has taught at Eureka College since 2000 and is a recipient of the college’s Helen Cleaver Distinguished Teaching Award.

Greenberg received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a juris doctor degree from the University of Michigan.

The presentation is the second of four Clarence R. Noe Dean’s Lectures by Eureka College faculty members this academic year. Others will be “A Thought Experiment on God and Being" by assistant professor of religion William Wright at 4 p.m. March 22 and "What's the Deal? Childhood Obesity Rises as Youth Sport Participation Reaches All-Time High” by associate professor of physical education Karen Sweitzer at 7:30 p.m. April 7. The lectures will be in the Cerf Center.

For more information, call the provost’s office at (309) 467-6301.                             

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Contact:

Michele Lehman

Media Relations Coordinator

mlehman@eureka.edu

(309) 467-6318