EASC (OSU) and the Asian Studies Program (Spelman College) present:

The Korean War and the Struggle for Civil Rights

Mitchell Lerner
Professor, History
Director, East Asian Studies Center
The Ohio State University

January 31, 2023
1:00 - 2:15pm (in person)
Cosby LL31 (Spelman College campus)

Jan 31 Flyer

Abstract: The relationship between the Korean War and the African American civil rights movement  is one that has been largely overlooked in the historical literature. This presentation  traces the struggles of the African American community during the war, focusing in particular on the battlefield experiences of African American soldiers, and concludes that Korea served   as a pivotal moment in directing the civil rights effort towards the more overtly aggressive  posture that is commonly associated with the war in Vietnam. This talk will suggest that the experiences of African American soldiers along the 38th parallel provided a critical step  towards the increased disillusionment and militancy of the subsequent decade.

Biography: Mitch Lerner, professor in the Department of History, is one of the nation’s leading experts on Korean foreign policy and US-Korea relations. His first book, a study of US-Korean relations in the 1960s, won the John Lyman Book Prize and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Since the book’s publication in 2004, he has authored nearly 20 journal articles and 3 edited volumes. He is also a regular public commentator on this topic, with op-eds in such venues as the New York Times, Washington Post, Korea Times, Cleveland Plains Dealer, The Diplomat, and The National Interest, and appearances on television, radio, and newspapers across the globe. Prof. Lerner has been a fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center for Public Affairs, served on the governing council of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and is on the advisory board of the North Korea International Documentation Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. He has also held the Mary Ball Washington Distinguished Fulbright Chair at University College-Dublin. He currently serves as associate editor of the Journal of American-East Asian Relations, and is a newly-appointed member of the Association for Asian Studies’ Distinguished Speakers Bureau. He received his PhD from the University of Texas-Austin.

Contact: Professor Tinaz Pavri, Founding Director, Asian Studies Program, tpavri@spelman.edu

This event  is coordinated by the Asian Studies Program and made possible in part by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.