S1E124 - The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement with Hajar Yazdiha

Episode Notes How is it that seemingly everyone – from liberals to conservatives, to celebrities, social media trolls, and your least favorite family member – has a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr quote or Civil Rights Movement reference at the ready? How is it that such disparate groups with various interests find meaning and support for their causes in Dr. King’s words? How is it that they can lay claim to his dream for their own visions of the future? Today I’m joined by Dr. Hajar Yazdiha to dig into how the Civil Rights Movement has become a readily available collective memory. She shares how groups reshape memory to make and contest political claims and the consequences of this reshaping. She also talks about how collective memory can be reworked to restore pieces of the past through processes of truth and reconciliation. Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California, faculty affiliate of the USC Equity Research Institute, and a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar (2023-2025). Hajar researches the politics of inclusion and exclusion, examining the forces that bring us together and keep us apart as we work to forge collective futures. In addition to being the author of The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement , she is also a public scholar whose writing and research has been featured in outlets including The New York Times, LA Times, ABC News, The Hill, and The Grio. Other episodes mentioned: Episode 112 Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement with Bobby J. Smith II

You can listen to S1E124 - The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement with Hajar Yazdiha online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

S1E124 - The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement with Hajar Yazdiha is an episode from Let's Grab Coffee by WYXR.

This episode is 00:48:20 long.

This episode was published on Jan 15, 2024.

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