Lifelong Activist and Educator Delivers Black History Month Lecture

Beginning with his earliest memory of racism, Dr. Paul Bushnell, Emeritus Professor of History at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois, shared his personal stories of activism as he delivered his Black History Month guest lecture on February 16.

Bushnell experienced firsthand many events that shaped the Civil Rights Movement. He recalls his first awareness of racism at a young age, witnessing the poor treatment of two African American children by a first grade teacher and recalling how the children never returned to school after the encounter.

As a graduate student at Vanderbilt University in 1960, he participated in the sit-in movement in Nashville, Tennessee. He also became a member of the local executive committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a group that promoted the efforts of the Civil Rights Movement.

Throughout many years in the South, Bushnell spent much of his time with African American friends and fellow activists. He explained that they avoided restaurants that didn’t allow blacks and whites to eat together and commented that candy machines were often the “most democratic” places to meet.

Bushnell’s work as a professor provided a way for his involvement in the continuing push for racial equality and the education of the broader community. He helped organize Illinois Wesleyan’s program in American studies and its minor in African-American studies. In addition, he published Diary of a Common Soldier in the American Revolution, 1775-1783, and several articles dealing with issues of race.

He fondly recalled meeting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and befriending civil rights leader James Lawson.

The lives of Bushnell and many like him are a testament that people can effect change. However, as Bushnell observed at the end of his lecture, racial issues such as unemployment, substandard housing, and inadequate education still exist today and must be addressed.