Gloria Willingham-Touré

 Event 

"The First, The Only, One of A Few" - A Matter of Black Lives

About the talk

Please join us for a live conversation with Dr. Gloria Willingham-Touré, Civil Rights activist and alum of our GALA partner, Claremont Graduate University, USA. This talk, hosted by CGU and co-sponsored by CGU and Bath Spa University, will examine a lifetime spent in the struggle for Civil Rights and place this historical effort in the context of the current Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and across the world. The discussion will be conducted in front of an international audience of students, scholars and the public on both sides of the Atlantic to place our current historical reckoning in a global context. A Q+A session will follow the talk.

This event is sponsored by Claremont Graduate University's Departments of History and Cultural Studies, Claremont Graduate University's School of Arts and Humanities, Bath Spa University and the Global Academy of Liberal Arts. This event is the first of a series co-hosted by CGU and Bath Spa University as part of the GALA network commemorating the international celebration of Black History Month in the UK (October) and the US (February). For more information about this and future events, please contact our CGU colleague, Professor Joshua Goode, joshua.goode@cgu.edu.

About Gloria

Dr. Willingham-Touré (né Nelson) was born during the Jim Crow Era of legalised racial segregation in the United States. Subsequently she grew up in all Black communities and rarely had any contact with White persons, nor with any other races. At the age of 14 she was selected as one of four Black students to enter the newly desegregated and history-making Little Rock Central High School (LRCHS).

Black students entering LRCHS after the nationally televised historic entrance of The Little Rock Nine, entered without the protections of the national guard or the watchful eyes of the media. She and the three other Black students who entered LRCHS in 1960 as tenth graders became the first cohort group of Black students to remain at this 'White' school for three consecutive years to graduation.

Dr. Willingham-Toure’s Life story is archived at The Center For Oral and Public History, California State University, Fullerton. as a part of the 2018 Women, Politics, and Activism Since Suffrage Oral History Project. She is currently the Executive Director- Afram Global Organization Inc and Founder of The 'Village P.r.o.j.e.c.t.s.' Her presentations are consistent with the Village P.r.o.j.e.c.t.s. Mission:

"To create environments in which persons from diverse circumstances and experiences can come together and co-learn with each other in a way that bridges the opportunity gaps, retains the respective cultures, and ultimately benefits society." – villageprojects.net

Recording will be available soon.