Uploaded February 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
At a Wednesdays at the Center talk at Duke University, Professor Nishani Frazier spoke about the flaws and fallout of President's Initiative on Race, launched by Bill Clinton in 1997.
The initiative, titled One America, promised to "help educate Americans about the facts surrounding issues of race, to promote a dialogue in every community of the land to confront and work through these issues, to recruit and encourage leadership at all levels to help breach racial divides, and to find, develop and recommend how to implement concrete solutions to our problems -- solutions that will involve all of us in government, business, communities, and as individual citizens."
Clinton's Race Initiative was the last of the major presidential-led commissions that specifically addressed the issue of racial inequality.
In this talk, professor Frazier discusses the country's way forward. Frazier focuses on the President's Initiative on Race, to learn all the lessons it has to teach. In what way can America retool PIR to force a reckoning with American politics and history.
Nishani Frazier is Associate Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Kansas, and previously held positions as Associate Curator of African American History and Archives at Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS) and Assistant to the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Archives at the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change. While at the Center, Frazier's public history work incorporated oral history, including: interviews for Anacostia's Black Mosaic Project, WRHS's Black veteran project, King Archives and Library civil rights activist programs, and community training sessions in oral history. Frazier was the personal assistant to Dr. John Hope Franklin before and during his tenure as chair of President Bill Clinton’s advisory board on “One America” and as a result, was an immediate participant and witness to the story of PIR.
Wednesdays at the Center is a series organized by the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke and the Duke University Center for International and Global Studies.
Learn more about the series:
https://igs.duke.edu/series/wednesdays-center-series
At a Wednesdays at the Center talk at Duke University, Professor Nishani Frazier spoke about the flaws and fallout of President's Initiative on Race, launched by Bill Clinton in 1997.
The initiative, titled One America, promised to "help educate Americans about the facts surrounding issues of race, to promote a dialogue in every community of the land to confront and work through these issues, to recruit and encourage leadership at all levels to help breach racial divides, and to find, develop and recommend how to implement concrete solutions to our problems -- solutions that will involve all of us in government, business, communities, and as individual citizens."
Clinton's Race Initiative was the last of the major presidential-led commissions that specifically addressed the issue of racial inequality.
In this talk, professor Frazier discusses the country's way forward. Frazier focuses on the President's Initiative on Race, to learn all the lessons it has to teach. In what way can America retool PIR to force a reckoning with American politics and history.
Nishani Frazier is Associate Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Kansas, and previously held positions as Associate Curator of African American History and Archives at Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS) and Assistant to the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Archives at the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change. While at the Center, Frazier's public history work incorporated oral history, including: interviews for Anacostia's Black Mosaic Project, WRHS's Black veteran project, King Archives and Library civil rights activist programs, and community training sessions in oral history. Frazier was the personal assistant to Dr. John Hope Franklin before and during his tenure as chair of President Bill Clinton’s advisory board on “One America” and as a result, was an immediate participant and witness to the story of PIR.
Wednesdays at the Center is a series organized by the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke and the Duke University Center for International and Global Studies.
Learn more about the series:
https://igs.duke.edu/series/wednesdays-center-series
