For release: September 2, 2011
For press information, contact Daphene R. McFerren, 901-678-3974

The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change will presents its annual Open House on Wednesday, September 14,  at 2:30 pm in the Michael D. Rose Theatre on the University of Memphis campus.  The event will announce exciting details about the Hooks Institute’s lineup of programs for the coming year. The event is free and open to the public.

Among the items to be discussed  at the Open House are a synopsis of research and community activities, and the Institute’s all-inclusive conference, Toward a More Perfect Union: Civil Rights, Human Rights, and Creating an Age of Social Responsibility, set for April 18-20, 2012.

Also to be discussed is the hosting by the Hooks Institute and the U of M History Department of a Charlotte W. Newcomb Doctoral Fellow of Religion and Ethics, who is studying the role of black nuns in the Civil Rights Movement. The Fellowship is administered by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

The Hooks Institute will also provide details of its capstone event, the public release of the documentary Duty of the Hour: The Life and Times of Benjamin L. Hooks.  This documentary is being produced by the Hooks Institute and its director, Daphene McFerren, and is being directed by award-winning filmmaker Reece L. Auguiste.  The red-carpet premiere will be held April 20, 2012, at the Orpheum Theatre.

In 1996, the Tennessee Board of Regents approved the creation of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change in the College of Arts & Sciences at the U of M. The mission of the Institute is teaching, studying, and promoting civil rights and social change. The Hooks Institute archives include Hooks’ personal papers, which are housed in the Mississippi Valley Collection in the University’s McWherter Library.