A real-time discussion of the past

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For a discussion that covered Hurricane Katrina, the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scopes Monkey trial and the life of Martin Luther King Jr., there was a surprising amount of laughter coming from the ‘Moments That Shaped America’ panel Sunday morning.

Panelists Bruce Watson (‘Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind’), Edward Humes (‘Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul’), Michael Eric Dyson (‘April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Death and How It Changed America’) and Douglas Brinkley (‘The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast’) each had his own way of keeping the audience chuckling.

Speaking to a largely white, over-50 audience, each author addressed his topics and how they related to the ‘moments that shaped America’ -- a phrase that moderator Elizabeth Taylor (not the actress but the editor of the Chicago Tribune’s magazine and books section) ‘maybe one of the most overused terms’ in academic parlance.

The authors spoke in chronological order of their topics, starting with the execution of Saco and Vanzetti in 1927 and ending with the breaking of the levies in New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005.

Dyson spoke about how King rates an entire month of celebration and contrasted that fact with the recent acquittal of police officers who shot and killed Sean Bell in Queens, N.Y. And Watson compared what he considered the false incarceration of Saco and Vanzetti with the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

The Q&A portion, though, was not as lighthearted as the discussion -- and listeners started filing out to catch another event. Questions from the audience centered on the reconciliation of religion and science, and the lack of critical thinking in current society -- at least that’s what one questioner felt.

--Lauren Williams

(Photo: Bartolomeo Vanzetti, left, and Nicola Sacco from Peter Miller’s 2007 documentary ‘Sacco and Vanzetti’)