SUNY Geneseo hosts book seminar on present-day segregation

The SUNY Geneseo Center for Local and Municipal History, in collaboration with the Geneseo History Department, will host a book seminar with Justin Murphy, author of Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger: School Segregation in Rochester, New York.

The event will take place Friday, Apr. 8 from 1-2:30 p.m. in the Doty Tower Room and will include a presentation on the topic of segregation in Rochester schools, as well as a question-and-answer session and book signing. 

According to his website, Murphy is the education reporter for the Democrat and Chronicle, a Rochester-based newspaper. He has written extensively about the Rochester City School District and published his book in March of this year. 

“[Your Children are Greatly in Danger] traces the roots of present-day segregation in the Rochester area back to the very birth of the city and provides the first comprehensive overview of the unsuccessful Civil Rights-era fight for desegregation,” according to the website. “The analysis extends to the present; in the conclusion, I offer three suggestions to advance the cause of racial integration in Rochester today.”

According to Joel Helfrich, director of the Center for Local and Municipal history, the center was created by funding from a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant secured by Distinguished Professor of History Michael Oberg.

Helfrich said, “The Center for local municipal history, who's responsible for inviting Justin Murphy to campus, was created about four or so years ago by Professor Michael Oberg. In January, I was hired to be the director of the program as a result of Michael securing a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, to basically formally launch and fund the center. And so, as part of that grant, some of our funding goes to inviting speakers to campus.”

Helfrich said that Murphy and his recently published book were a good fit for the kind of speakers that the center wanted to invite to speak on campus. 

“Last fall, we thought we had heard about Justin writing this book about segregation within the City School District in Rochester, and we figured ‘why not invite him?’ We know this book's coming out, and it's a topic that's of relevance to not only the history students, but also students who are in the early education program,” he said.

According to Helfrich, thanks to the NEH grant secured by Oberg, the College will be able to continue to host seminars on historical subjects, as well as provide study opportunities and internships with local historians to Geneseo students. 

“So, New York State is one of two states in the country that have a law that basically says that every municipal government needs to have its own historian. That makes about 1,600 government appointed historians across the state. What happened is, we've had a pretty good amount of luck placing students in internships and doing independent studies with some of these government appointed stories, and we’ve created 21 internship opportunities this year,” he said. 

Helfrich explained that Oberg did a majority of the work securing and organizing the grant that allows the College to invite speakers like Murphy and to place students in internships with local historians. 

“I'd say most of the responsibility and most of the hard work was done by Michael Oberg. I helped to a very limited extent with the writing of the grant application, and then there's a series of people at the college that helped with that as well, but I'd say a good 90-95% of the work was done by Michael Oberg to get that grant.” 

Copies of Murphy’s book Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger: School Segregation in Rochester, New York will be available to purchase with cash only following the seminar, and Murphy encourages readers to buy copies from Hipocampo Books, a local printing company that supports anti-racist action in Rochester.