{related_entries id="evnt_auth_1"} {/related_entries}

Historian Simon Hall explains why 1956 was a year that changed our world every bit as much as the events of 1789 and 1848.

Hall says 1956 was a remarkable year that saw ordinary people speaking out and filling city streets and squares in an attempt to win their freedom. There were popular uprisings against Moscow in Poland and Hungary; in the American south and in South Africa black people were risking their lives and livelihoods in the struggle against institutionalised white supremacy; France and Britain faced the humiliation of Suez; and in Cuba Fidel Castro was plotting the overthrow of a dictator. It was also a year in which those in power fought back against the challenges.

Hall is a senior lecturer in American history and head of School of History at the University of Leeds. He has a particular expertise in the civil rights and black power movements of 1960s United States. He is also author of Peace and Freedom: The Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements in the 1960s and Rethinking the American Anti-War Movement.