Civil Rights Era
A notable period in the history of Vanderbilt Divinity School was the Civil Rights era. In 1960, African-American Divinity student James Lawson was expelled from the university for his role in nonviolent protests in the Nashville area. This expulsion, in turn, sparked great protest from many members of the Vanderbilt community, including most of the faculty of the Divinity School, who resigned en masse. The so-called "Lawson Affair" was eventually resolved with Lawson's nominal reinstatement, and the resigned faculty resumed their posts.
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Famous quotes containing the words civil rights, civil, rights and/or era:
“... as a result of generations of betrayal, it’s nearly impossible for Southern Negroes to trust a Southern white. No matter what he does or what he suffers, a white liberal is never established beyond suspicion in the hearts of the minority.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 10 (1962)
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit.... A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“It struck me that the movies had spent more than half a century saying, “They lived happily ever after” and the following quarter-century warning that they’ll be lucky to make it through the weekend. Possibly now we are now entering a third era in which the movies will be sounding a note of cautious optimism: You know it just might work.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)