Mahan Lecture Features Dr. Joe Trotter

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Posted on March 17, 2023

Logan Gatlin

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Dr. Joe Trotter Jr., a history and social justice professor at Carnegie Mellon University, will speak on “African American History and COVID-19: Reflections of an Urban Labor and Social Historian” at the Department of History’s Mahan Lecture at the University of South Alabama. The event to be held on March 30, at 7 p.m. in the Marx Library, is free and open to the public. 

“I selected the topic of Black health from a historical perspective because the Covid-19 pandemic required all-hands-on-deck to grapple with the wide-ranging implications and impact of the disease,” said Trotter. “History can help us see how we handled challenges from the past as both inspiration and guide for our own times.”

He also gives insight into what he wants attendees to take away from his presentation.

“In this talk, I would like for people to recall how the early accounts of the coronavirus pandemic downplayed the impact of the disease on African Americans. But we soon realized that the pandemic not only affected Black people and other communities of color, it affected them in disproportionately larger numbers than their Euro-American counterparts,” said Trotter. “In this talk, I hope people will take away a deeper historical understanding of African American health care, including especially the ways that African Americans repeatedly built upon a long legacy of health care activism to improve their own physical and mental well-being.”

Dr. David Messenger, history chair and professor at South Alabama, shared the importance of the Mahan Lecture and what it means for the University community.

 “It brings scholars to Mobile in a variety of fields to share their historical research with the University and the broader Mobile community,” Messenger said. “The Mahan Lecture is one of two annual lectures we in the Department of History host, so it is important to us, and also a way to honor our founding department chair, Dr. Howard Mahan.”

 The Howard F. Mahan Lecture Series was created in 2001. 

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