Looking Back to Understand the Present: Black Freedom Struggles and the Long Arc of History
Oct 27, 1:30 PM–3:00 PM
RIM Park
2001 University Ave E, Waterloo, ON N2J 4G8, Canada
$10
Organized by Third Age Learning Kitchener-Waterloo (TAL-KW)
Lecture by Dr. Christopher Stuart Taylor, part of the TAL-KW Fall 2026 series “Eras of Turmoil: 1960s and Now”.
In this lecture, historian Christopher Stuart Taylor begins from a simple observation: many of us in the room have lived through extraordinary social change. We remember the 1960s not as history, but as lived experience. We remember the news images, the protests, the speeches, and the sense that the world was shifting in important and sometimes unsettling ways.
Drawing on his work as a historian of Black Canadian and Afro‑diasporic life, Taylor invites audiences to revisit that period and consider what it set in motion. Rather than treating the 1960s as a moment that resolved the question of racial equality, this talk explores what has changed since then and what has remained stubbornly familiar. Taylor reflects on how ideas about citizenship, fairness, and belonging that emerged during the Civil Rights era continue to shape public conversations today, often in new language and unfamiliar forms.
This lecture is less about assigning blame and more about understanding continuity, responsibility, and learning across generations.
Individual lecture tickets are $10 per person (HST included), cash or cheque only, at the Registrar table outside the lecture hall at RIM Park just before the lecture (opens about 1:00 pm).