Reckoning: Kalamazoo College Uncovers Its Racial and Colonial Past: a Conversation with Anne Deuweke and Donna Odom

Join author Anne Deuweke with advocate and former Executive Director of the Society for History and Racial Equity in Kalamazoo, Donna Odom, for a conversation focused on Dueweke’s new book, Reckoning: Kalamazoo College Uncovers Its Racial and Colonial Past.

At a time when many individuals and institutions are reexamining their histories to better understand their tangled roots of racism and oppression, Reckoning: Kalamazoo College Uncovers Its Racial and Colonial Past tells the story of how American ideas about colonialism and race shaped Kalamazoo College. Duewenke and Odom will discuss how the book covers the College’s beginning with its founding in 1833 during the era of Indian Removal and follows its development through the Civil War, the long period of racial entrenchment that followed Reconstruction, minstrel shows performed on campus in the 1950s during the rise of the Civil Rights movement, Black student activism in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination, the quest for multiculturalism in the 1990s, and the recent activism of a changing student body.

Reckoning challenges higher education to use this moment to make the deep, structural changes necessary to eliminate disparities in experiences and outcomes among students of color and their white peers.