Postgraduate Profile

Mr Daniel Fleming

PhD Candidate, School of Humanities & Social Science

Discipline: History
Email:  daniel.fleming@uon.edu.au
Campus:  Callaghan Campus, Newcastle

 

Current Research

Title of Research/Thesis: Living the Dream: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday, 1986-1996

Abstract: On 8 April 1968, John Conyers introduced legislation to the US Congress calling for a National Holiday in honour of Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1983, Congress established a holiday in honour King and then established a Commission to institutionalise King Day. The Commission used King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech to celebrate “racial equality and nonviolent social change”. Yet, in 1986, historian Vincent Harding wrote that a “national amnesia” developed about King which omitted King’s radical post-1965 peace and economic activism.

My thesis examines the Commission and its planning of King Day celebrations from 1984 to 1996. Based on extensive archival research, I will explore the effort this desegregate the American Calendar. King’s contested memorialisation was a passionate historical issue in the late 20th Century, when Coretta Scott King, civil rights movement veterans, and Republican and Democrat politicians vied to define his legacy in a so called ‘color-blind era.’

Research Publications

“Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.” in Agora, Vol 46, No 1, 2011

“Marvin Gaye, Martin Luther King and the FBI” in Traffic, Vol 9, 2007 http://www.gsa.unimelb.edu.au/Traffic9/Traffic_9_Contents.shtml

“1858 - Archibald Gilchrist” for Students, Scholars and Structures: Early Tales from the University of Melbourne,  Student Research Series, Vol 8. 2002, http://www.history.unimelb.edu.au/publications/student.html

Awards and Prizes

  • Australian American Association ANZASA Scholarship 2012, awarded by the US Consul General

Research Activities (such as conferences, grants, teaching/related employment)

‘Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Contested Legacy’ at ANZASA 2012, hosted by the University of Queensland.

Memberships of Professional Associations: