Former New Orleans mayor Marc H. Morial is the featured speaker for the Jackson State University Fall Commencement.
Morial will speak at 6 p.m. Dec. 12 at the Lee E. Williams Athletics and Assembly Center, said Dr. Sheila C. Porterfield, associate dean of the College of Business.
An entrepreneur, lawyer, professor, former legislator and mayor, Morial is the current president of the National Urban League. He served as mayor of New Orleans from 1994 to 2002.
With more than 25 years of public service, Morial has a wealth of experience to share with new graduates.
As an entrepreneur, he started several successful small businesses, including apparel wholesale company, a special events company, and a janitorial company.
As a lawyer, Morial won the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Pro Bono Publico Award for his legal service to the poor and disadvantaged. He was also one of the youngest lawyers, at age 26, to argue and win a major case before the Louisiana Supreme Court.
As a professor, Morial served on the adjunct faculty of Xavier University in Louisiana, where he taught Constitutional Law and Business Law.
He has served as a Louisiana state senator, and as chief executive of New Orleans he crafted a broad multi-racial coalition, leaving office with a 70 percent approval rating.
As president of the National Urban League since 2003, he has expanded the 100-year-old civil rights organization’s work to focus on closing the economic gaps between white and black and rich and poor Americans.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in economics and African American studies, he holds a law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., as well as honorary degrees from Xavier University, Wilberforce University, and the University of South Carolina Upstate.
He serves as an executive committee member of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Black Leadership Forum, and Leadership 18, and is a board member of the Muhammad Ali Center and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
He has been recognized as one of the 100 most influential Black Americans by Ebony magazine, as well as one of the Top 50 Nonprofit Executives by Nonprofit Times.