THE ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT AT UMASS AMHERST PRESENTS A SYMPOSIUM
SHARING THE PRIZE
Reconsidering the Economics
of the Civil Rights Movement
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
GAVIN WRIGHT
William Robertson Coe Professor Emeritus of American Economic History,
Stanford University and Visiting Professor, Yale University
In his book, Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South (2013),
Professor Wright argues that the Civil Rights Movement was an economic as well as a moral and legal
revolution, opening new opportunities in education, employment, and occupational status for African
Americans, primarily in the South. He argues white southerners also benefited from the Civil Rights revolution
and explores why they for so long defended a system that was not in their own best economic interests.
COMMENTATORS: JOHN H. BRACEY JR. W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies
GERALD FRIEDMAN Department of Economics • KATHERINE NEWMAN Department of Sociology
MODERATOR: CAROL E. HEIM Department of Economics
Wednesday, March 23, 2016, 4–6 p.m.
Cape Cod Lounge, Student Union, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
A reception open to all will follow the symposium.
Co-Sponsors: W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies • Department of Economics • Department of History
Department of Political Science • Department of Sociology • Center for Public Policy and Administration • Political Economy
Research Institute • Social Thought and Political Economy Program • Institute for Teaching Excellence and Faculty Development
Office of the Provost