"They Came to America"

Discussion Series

Join a group of avid history fans that love talking back to History. Led by Scholars, its the personal experiences of the audience that make these discussions so much fun.

Tuesday March 13 @ 7pm

De TOCQUEVILLE & BEAUMONT, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
Led by George Frein and Larry Bounds

Chautauqua Artistic Director George Frein and Asst. Artistic Director Larry Bounds, join together to discuss two of America's most famous traveling companions. In 1831-32, these two French aristocrats "Came to America" to learn the secret of a new world where democracy and equality were supposed to rule. Out of their Grand Tour came Tocqueville's seminal "Democracy in America" (still studied today) and Beaumont's novel "Marie, or Slavery in the United States." View America's balancing act between political liberty and social equality through the eyes of these aestute Frenchmen. Learn how many of their 1820's predictions about America still hold true today. A new book reproducing their journey is available at the library - "Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America." Oliver Zunz ed. 2010. Dr. Frein is an nationally acclaimed Chautauqua performer and will perform as Carl Jung in the June Chautauqua Festival.

Tuesday April 10 @ 7pm

GOLDA MEIR AND AMERICA
Led by Fred Leffert, Hank Liberman and Shirley Sarlin

Fred Leffert is a retired Greenville physician with a llfe-long interest in Jewish studies (ancient and contemporary). He teaches Hebrew and is one of OLLI's most popular instructors.

Hank Liberman was born in what is now Israel in the early 40's, went to college and served in the Israeli army. He left after the 1967 war for graduate school and has lived in the US ever since. He has vivid memories of achieving independence in 1948.

Shirley Sarlin studied Golda Meir extensively as she prepared for her performance in the 1994 one woman show The Other Side of Golda: At Home with Golda Meir. She is a noted Greenville actress and will star in Lost in Yonkers at the Warehouse Theater in June.

Golda Meir, came to America as a child of 8 when her family fled Russian pogroms. She grew up in Milwaukee, WI and taught in Milwaukee public schools for a time before moving to Palestine to work on a Kibbutz. Just before the 1948 war (because she spoke the best "American") she was sent to the US to raise funds for the Zionist cause. In a few days she raised $50 million. Ben-Gurion called Meir "the woman who got the money which made the state possible". In the new state of Israel she served as Labor Minister and Foreign Minister before becoming the fourth Prime Minister of Israel. While he was President, Richard Nixon commented to her that both Israel and the U.S. had Jewish “Foreign Ministers” (Kissinger and Abba Eban). "Yes," she responded, "but mine speaks English."

Tuesday May 8 @ 7pm

DENMARK VESEY SLAVE REBELLION
Led by Carmen Harris, Phd

Dr. Harris is Associate Professor of History at University of South Carolina Upstate and teaches African American, U.S., and Latin American history. Her research and teaching interests are African American, Southern and South Carolina History. She recently completed a six-year term as a member of the Board of Directors of the South Carolina Humanities Council. She brings a true humanities approach to her teaching of history. Denmark Vesey was a seasoned world traveler when he arrived in Charleston, a black seaman slave on his master’s ship.  He was literate and spoke three languages. Winning the lottery, he purchased his freedom and became a successful businessman, but could not reconcile being a free man in a slave world. He was convicted as the master-mind of the suppressed 1822 Charleston slave uprising.  Of the 101 tried for insurrection, Vesey and 34 others were hanged, 2 died and 40 were sold.  Charleston and the South were changed forever as America drew closer to Civil War.