African Studies Program Sponsored Lecture

“Organizing Around Africa in the Obama Era.”

A Community Lecture with Activist & Educator
Prexy Nesbitt
Wednesday, March 25, 7:30 pm
Unitarian Universalist Church
2120 N. Fee Lane
Bloomington, Indiana
Sponsored by the African Studies Program

Prexy Nesbitt is an activist and educator whose work over the past four decades has been connecting freedom-loving peoples in Africa, Europe and North America to each other, strengthening progressive political and social movements on both continents.

Mr. Nesbitt’s passion and life’s work has been with Africa. He joined the staff of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland in 1979, and became part of its highly controversial Program to Combat Racism. In the South African anti-apartheid movement, Mr. Nesbitt played a major role in initiating divestment campaigns on US campuses, while also raising awareness of the issues facing the peoples of Southern Africa. In 1987, he was appointed by the President of Mozambique to act as a special representative to the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Born in Chicago and deeply rooted there, Mr. Nesbitt describes his family as “a remarkable and very ‘un-American’ African American family.” Surrounded by educators and activists, his childhood was filled with people engaged in civil rights and union organizing. He has taught at the high school and college level as well as serving as a school administrator.

Mr. Nesbitt has also worked for the Institute for Policy Studies, the John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the American Friends Service Committee and Africa Action. He has authored many articles and a book, Apartheid in Our Living Rooms: US Foreign Policy and South Africa. He currently teaches African History at Columbia College in Chicago, co-teaches at the Urban Studies Program of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, and consults regarding African constituency- building for the American Friends Service Committee.