David Ritz Finkelstein Fellowship
Bold Ideas in Physics: Celebrating David Ritz Finkelstein
https://www.davidritzfinkelstein.com/
A scholarship, preferably awarded to an outstanding African-American student passionate about theoretical physics.
Scholarships are awarded from the fund established in honor of David Ritz Finkelstein (1929 – 2016), a professor in the School of Physics of Georgia Tech and a theoretical physicist who had pioneered many of the ideas that still today animate research on gravitational fields, quantum space-time, and quantum computation, and the first to establish that black holes could exist. Finkelstein was also a passionate educator and humanist. In 1964 he, accompanied by wife and three young children, moved to Tougaloo College, Mississippi, a center of civil rights activism in the segregated American south. Finkelstein’s involvement with the Tougaloo community went far beyond teaching physics. He also contributed to a radio-based security system for Tougaloo civil rights activists, and helped establish the Public Radio Organization, whose aim was to provide central Mississippi Blacks with unbiased news reporting. To learn more, visit www.davidritzfinkelstein.com.
David’s friends are grateful for any contribution to the Finkelstein Fellowship Endowment (55D450), no matter how small. Checks should be made payable to the Georgia Tech Foundation, and mailed to Georgia Tech Foundation, Inc.; 760 Spring Street, NW, Suite 400, Atlanta, GA 30308. Or, online, please visit https://MyGeorgiaTech.gatech.edu/givi..., and enter your gift amount, designate it for "David Ritz Finkelstein Fellowship in Physics" in the Special Purpose field.
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Tougaloo College in the 1960s was known as a place of safety for civil rights workers. Students were trained on this campus for voter registration drives. Many of the events such as the Freedom Rides and sit-ins were planned here. Because Tougaloo College was a private institution administered by a board in New York, it was free from State control.
March 27, 1961 Tougaloo 9 attempted to integrate whites-only public library in Jackson
June 12, 1963 Assassination of Medgar Evers, faculty homes fire-bombings
June 1964 Freedom Summer begins
For decades, corporations in Mississippi made no contributions to the Tougaloo College. Tougaloo College was, unlike any other college in the state, a unique movement-friendly institution. In 1962, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission provided files about the College to the [White] Citizens’ Council, to enlist their aid in investigating and shutting down the College. The FBI infiltrated Tougaloo’s student body, and J. Edgar Hoover added Tougaloo to his "enemies" list.
Though the Sovereignty Commission and other segregationists put enormous pressures on Tougaloo to terminate its involvement in the movement, ironically it was Brown University’s president, Barnaby Keeney, who was most successful in achieving this goal. Keeney, who later acknowledged that he was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and assisted the CIA in “setting up covert funding operations” while president of Brown, appears to have been pivotal in pressuring Tougaloo’s Board of Trustees to force President Beittel into early retirement.
"Joseph Jackson, Jr. and the Tougaloo Nine"
http://fromthevaultradio.org/home/201... (1 hour)
"Mississippi Project, Bob Moses at Tougaloo College, Jackson, Miss., 1963" https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/singleitem... (25 min)
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