ADA, Okla. – East Central University’s annual Rothbaum Lecture returns to campus Thursday, Sept. 17 at 7 p.m. in the Estep Multimedia Center located inside the Bill S. Cole University Center.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
The Rothbaum Lecture, traditionally delivered on Constitution Day, marks the same date in 1789 when the final draft of the U.S. Constitution was signed by members of the Constitutional Convention.
Dr. Felix Harcourt will deliver the lecture this year, titled, “Outlawry in Oklahoma: The Ku Klux Klan and the Constitution in the 1920s.”
Harcourt received his Ph.D. and M.A. from George Washington University and his B.A. from the University of Warwick. He currently serves as Associate Professor of History at Austin College in Sherman, Texas.
He is the author of “’Ku Klux Konspiracism’ in American Conspiracism: An Interdisciplinary Exploration” (Routledge, 2024), “Ku Klux Kulture: America and the Klan in the 1920s”(University of Chicago Press, 2017) and “’Invisible Umpires: The Ku Klux Klan and Baseball in the 1920s.’ NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 23:1 (2014). His research interests cover Civil Rights history, immigration history, prejudice, politics, popular culture and the Jazz Age and New Deal.
This year, the Rothbaum Lecture will serve as the culmination of “The 1920s: A Centenary Retrospective,” an all-day event that will begin at 8 a.m. in the Estep Multimedia Center and will feature faculty talks at 8 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., along with musical performances, a film screening and a 1920s jazz performance.
For a full list of the day’s events, visit https://tinyurl.com/5y2pcvj6.
The Rothbaum Lecture is funded by an endowment established by the late Julian Rothbaum with a $25,000 gift to the ECU Foundation that was matched by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. Rothbaum also established an endowment to fund the George Nigh Award for ECU’s top graduating senior.
A native of Tulsa, Rothbaum was a longtime leader in Oklahoma civic affairs, a 1986 inductee into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame and a member of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education and the University of Oklahoma Regents.
For more information on the lecture or the ECU Department of History, contact Dr. Christopher Bean at cbean@ecok.edu or 580-559-5418.
For more information about “The 1920s: A Centenary Retrospective,” contact ECU Honors Program director Dr. Steve Benton at sbenton@ecok.edu or call 580-559-5877.
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