{"id":7205,"date":"2016-08-15T20:03:51","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T20:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/?p=7205"},"modified":"2024-06-26T18:26:34","modified_gmt":"2024-06-26T18:26:34","slug":"bill-greens-lends-historical-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/2016\/08\/15\/bill-greens-lends-historical-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Green lends historical perspective to Black Lives Matter media coverage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Summer<\/p>\n

What does it mean to matter? \u2009What does it look like to matter?<\/p>\n

With the Black Lives Matter movement, questions of racial equity have ignited important\u2014and difficult\u2014conversations in communities and courtrooms, on political campaign trails, and at\u00a0college campuses.<\/p>\n

Augsburg College Professor William \u201cBill\u201d Green<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>studies and writes about Minnesota history and law. He teaches U.S. Civil Rights subject matter, and he recently has been called upon to share his expertise on these topics\u00a0to assist media outlets covering Black Lives Matter news in the Twin Cities.<\/p>\n

Green\u00a0was quoted in a Minnesota Public Radio article that examined the roles non-black activists play in furthering the\u00a0Black Lives Matter movement\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n

In the article, \u201cAllies on the front lines: Black Lives Matter\u2019s non-black activists<\/a>,\u201d Green used\u00a0the history of the Civil Rights movement to analyze current demonstrations and protests. He also discussed the ways \u201cprotest fatigue\u201d could impact the movement\u2019s progression.<\/p>\n

On August 5, Green also appeared on\u00a0Twin Cities Public Television’s “Almanac” program where he provided a comparison between contemporary protests or\u00a0demonstrations and\u00a0those occurring decades — perhaps\u00a0even centuries — earlier. Green explained that the tactic of making a public display can be useful when a group is seeking to meet a particular goal.<\/p>\n

“The trick with the demonstrations, of course, is somehow helping society turn the corner so that … a community doesn’t feel the need to resort to desperate measures,” he said.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0interview with cohosts Cathy Wurzer and Eric Eskola is available on the TPT website<\/a> and begins at the 31:55 minute mark.<\/p>\n

Green’s comprehensive knowledge of Minnesota history has been cultivated over decades, and his latest\u00a0book, \u201cDegrees of Freedom: The Origins of Civil Rights in Minnesota, 1865-1912\u201d\u00a0chronicles conditions for African-Americans in Minnesota in the half-century following the Civil War. The publication picks up where his\u00a0previous book, \u201cA Peculiar Imbalance: The Fall and Rise of Racial Equality in Minnesota, 1837-1869,\u201d\u00a0left off. Green spoke with MinnPost about the publication, describing his interest in state\u00a0history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe history [of Minnesota] is amazing, particularly when you look at who was here before statehood and how they interacted with each other,\u201d he\u00a0said. \u201cI found that we were lacking a good accounting of the black people who were part of that history. Most of them didn\u2019t leave a written record, which looks like they had nothing to say, but of course they did. They were part of this experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Minnesota Book Awards honored Green and “Degrees of Freedom” with the 2016 Hognander Minnesota History Award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What does it mean to matter? \u2009What does it look like to matter? With the Black Lives Matter movement, questions of racial equity have ignited important\u2014and difficult\u2014conversations in communities and courtrooms, on political campaign trails, and at\u00a0college campuses. Augsburg College Professor William \u201cBill\u201d Green\u00a0studies and writes about Minnesota history and law. He teaches U.S. Civil …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[379,3885,1276,1933,2312,3629],"class_list":["post-7205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-faculty","tag-bill-green","tag-black-lives-matter","tag-history","tag-minnesota","tag-politics","tag-william-green"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7205"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11505,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7205\/revisions\/11505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}