Creativity and Purpose: The NIA Cultural Organization and Black Power in San Diego, 1967-1977

Creativity and Purpose: The NIA Cultural Organization and Black Power in San Diego, 1967-1977
With Mychal Odom
Monday, February 27, 2017
Geisel Library, Seuss Room
Noon – 1:00 PM

Notes | Slides |  Audio  

The very publicized shooting between the Black Panther Party and Us Organization at UC Los Angeles’ Campbell Hall in January 1969 has often been understood as the decline of the Black Power movement in Southern California specifically, and the United States more generally.  However, as Mychal Odom will explain, a study of the National Involvement Association (NIA) Cultural Organization intervenes into that reading of the Black Liberation Movement.  Founded by former advocates of the San Diego Us Organization in 1970, NIA “very likely saved the Black Power Movement in San Diego” as Mychal Odom argues in his doctoral research.  Drawing from oral histories he has conducted, private collection material, periodicals, and rare materials housed in the Library’s Special Collections & Archives, Odom will explain the role NIA’s educational programming, cultural work, labor activism, and African liberation support continued the work of Black Power and laid the very important ground for anti-apartheid struggles in San Diego during the 1970s and 1980s.
Mychal Odom is a doctoral candidate in the UC San Diego History Department and a Hill Fellowship recipient.  A resident of San Diego since 1997, Odom has over ten years of teaching experience in Black Studies at the college and university level.  At UC San Diego, he has been active in the Black Graduate Student Association and the Black Studies Project.  He is also a member of Pillars of the Community San Diego, a community organization who fights for the rights of formerly incarcerated people and their families, among their many other projects.
This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served!
For questions or more information, please contact Gayatri Singh, gasingh@ucsd.edu.