March 12, 2009

BIRMINGHAM, Ala - The UAB History Department's Colloquium Series will present a lecture by the award-winning writer and historian Robert J. Norrell, author of the biography "Up From History: The Life of Booker T. Washington." Norrell will discuss the book at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 8, in Heritage Hall, Room 102, 1401 University Blvd. The event is free and open to the public. For more details, call 205-934-5634.

Washington, who was born a slave, founded Tuskegee Institute. He was a gifted orator who wrote his autobiography "Up From Slavery."

In "Up From History," Norrell examines Washington's efforts to lift the African-American community by encouraging the development of human capital through education, economic independence, morality and enterprise. Norrell's book also addresses Washington's struggles against racists as well as African-American intellectuals who criticized him for not advocating a harder line of activism for civil rights.

Norrell's other books include "The House I Live In: Race in the American Century," published in 2005, and "Reaping the Whirlwind: The Civil Rights Movement in Tuskegee," which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award in 1986.

Norrell holds the Bernadotte Schmitt Chair of Excellence and is professor of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In 2006 he received the Booker T. Washington Legacy Prize from the Heartland Institute.