In Conversation with Civil Rights Activist Fred Anderson

Join us for an inspiring and historic conversation with Fred Anderson, civil rights activist, author, and community leader, as he reflects on a life led with courage, purpose, and compassion. In dialogue with Kelann Currie-Williams, a Concordia doctoral scholar and oral historian, Anderson will discuss his journey from the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi to his decades of social advocacy in Montreal.

Through stories that are deeply personal yet historically resonant, Anderson offers a rare firsthand perspective on the fight for justice and dignity that shaped a generation. Together, he and Currie-Williams will explore themes of courage, belonging, and the evolving meaning of social change across borders and generations.

This conversation will invite participants to consider how past struggles for civil rights continue to shape today’s work for equity, inclusion, and community resilience.

How can you participate? Join us in person by filling out the form or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca

Fred Anderson

Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Fred Anderson joined the Civil Rights Movement as a teenager and became a field secretary for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), organizing in the Mississippi Delta, Alabama, and Southwest Georgia. In the winter of 1966, he fled to Montreal as a Vietnam war resister.

At Sir George Williams University (now Concordia), Anderson received the 1973 Board of Governors Medal for Creative Expression in Literary Arts. He went on to co-found two Black research institutes and a Black literary forum and is a member of the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF). Professionally, he served as a program manager overseeing gender-specific therapeutic interventions for adolescent girls in English-speaking rehabilitation centres and later in Northern Quebec, supporting Inuit and Cree youth.

Fred Anderson is the author of The Eyes Have Seen: From Mississippi to Montreal, a powerful memoir chronicling his journey from the Deep South to Canada. The book was recently featured on CBC’s The Bridge with Nantali Indongo and has been shortlisted for the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF) Concordia University First Book Prize in 2025.

Kelann Currie-Williams

Kelann Currie-Williams (she/they) is a writer, photo-based artist, and oral historian based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. She is a SSHRC CGS-funded PhD candidate at Concordia University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, specializing in visual culture, oral history, and Black Studies.

Her work explores the photographic and archival practices of Black Canada’s Caribbean diaspora from the late nineteenth to late twentieth centuries. Currie-Williams’s writing has appeared in the Canadian Journal of History, Philosophy of Photography, Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Urban History Review, Quebec Heritage News, and alt.theatre online. She is affiliated with the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS), Post Image Cluster (Milieux Institute), and Access in the Making Lab (AIM).

Organized by the Black Perspectives Office.