SLIPPERY ROCK — Students, professors and guests filled the Smith Center Ballroom at Slippery Rock University on Monday for a lecture on racial segregation and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

William Sturkey, historian and postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina, discussed examples of Jim Crow laws that were prevalent in the South during the 1960s. These laws dictated segregation in the United States from the 1800s until the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

Jim Crow laws sparked protests nationwide and exposed the violence and damage caused by segregation.

Sturkey emphasized the idea that segregation was a psychological act as much as a social one.

“A lot of people just don’t understand the psychological impact of segregation and Jim Crow. They say, just sit in the back of the bus and move on with your day, but that’s the point I’m trying to make,” Sturkey said. “It’s not just about the actual spatial segregation, it’s society at every turn telling you that you’re inferior.”

He also highlighted the key events that led to the Act, from the 1960 presidential election, which was heavily influenced by African-American voters supporting John F. Kennedy, to civil rights sit-ins and the 1963 Birmingham riots to Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington.

“Ending public segregation changed the way that African Americans experienced life,” Sturkey said. “Even if it didn’t solve all of the problems, it really changed the world view of a lot of different people and opened up new sorts of possibilities.”

Lia Paradis, chairman of the SRU Department of History, said Sturkey’s lecture is part of the university’s 5th annual, weeklong Diversity and Inclusion Series. This year’s theme honors the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.

“I think that it’s important to expose our students, who — for the most part — come from areas where there’s not a lot of racial diversity, to the experiences and issues of people of color,” Paradis said. “And to have them better understand communities and experiences that are different from their own.”

Keshia Booker, a graduate student from Erie, said she recently returned from a cultural trip to New York City, where she visited the Schomburg Center For Research In Black Culture in Harlem.

“One of the exhibits that we saw was at the Schomburg, and they were displaying a then-and-now,” Booker said. “The pictures that (Sturkey) showed of Medgar Evers’ house, as well as the picture of the house in the bombing, we saw pictures of what (those houses) would currently look like now in New York. So it’s just an interesting way to tie it all together.”

Sturkey’s lecture was the first keynote event of the diversity series, which ends today.