Events at U of M Will Mark 40th Anniversary of King

For release: March 20, 2008
For press information, contact Gabrielle Maxey

The University of Memphis will host a series of events marking the 40th anniversary of a defining moment in American history – the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968.

All events listed are free and open to the public. They include:

March 26 – Belle McWilliams Lecture by Dr. Laurie Green, “Finding the Roots of the Sanitation Strike: Against the ‘Plantation Mentality' in Memphis, 1940-1968," 7 p.m., Mitchell Hall auditorium. Green is assistant professor of history at the University of Texas and author of Battling the ‘Plantation Mentality': Race, Gender and Freedom in Memphis during the Civil Rights Era.

March 27 –“Neo-liberalizing Race in the Age of Globalization" address by David Theo Goldberg of the University of California, Irvine, 6 p.m., National Civil Rights Museum.

March 28 – Scholars in Critical Race Conference, Fogelman Executive Conference Center, Room 219. The morning session, beginning at 9 a.m., will be “Jewish Responses to Civil Rights and Apartheid." There will be presentations by Dr. Anne Reef of the U of M, Rabbi Micah Greenstein of Temple Israel and Adam Mendelsohn of Brandeis University. Afternoon sessions will be “Postcolonial Civil Rights and Post-Civil Rights Colonialism," 1:30 p.m., with presentations by Peter Kuryla of Vanderbilt University and Uli Lenke of Rochester Institute of Technology; and “Transnational Civil Rights," 3:15 p.m., with presentations by Julie Erin Wood of Yale University and Damon Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania.

April 2 – Untold Chapters of the Memphis Movement, Michael D. Rose Theatre. Forum One, at 10 a.m., will feature historical accounts from the “Memphis State 109," a group of student activists who protested in 1968 and were jailed in 1969. Forum Two, at 1:30 p.m., will include stories by unsung heroes of the Memphis Civil Rights Movement, including media, militants and Movement leaders.

Angela Davis

April 4 – The Martin Luther King Jr. Human Rights Award will be presented to Velma Lois Jones, 2 p.m., Rose Theatre entertainment lobby. The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship will be awarded to Britnee Gillum.

For more information about these events, call 901-543-5300.