Ithaca College

Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of America

National Humanities Medal-winning historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall weaves together the stories of Elizabeth, Grace, and Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, three sisters who were born into a former slave owning family and steeped in devotion to white supremacy and the Confederacy’s “Lost Cause.” Combining biography with history, she also spirals outward, gathering and illuminating larger stories of the movements, networks, and events in which these women were involved. Elizabeth, the eldest, never strayed far from her upbringing.  But in lives lived on both sides of the Mason Dixon line, Grace and Katharine fought to break free. SISTERS AND REBELS combines an intimate consideration of the fraught ties of sisterhood with the recovery of an embattled progressive tradition organic to the South, a tradition that included both expatriates and people who never left the region. Telling a story about the past that is also a story for our time, Hall joins an ongoing conversation about how white Americans can face up to a legacy of slavery and segregation—our country’s original sin.

Wednesday, October 30th @ 7PM in Emerson Suites  

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