Jackson State University’s 47th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Convocation will be held at 10 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 16, followed by the 20th Anniversary For My People Awards Luncheon at 11:30.
According to Dr. Robert Luckett, director of JSU’s Margaret Walker Center for the Study of the African-American Experience, the festivities will kick off the year-long celebration of the life of renowned author and late JSU professor Margaret Walker.
The Convocation to honor King was started by Walker only 9 months after King’s death, making it one of the earliest celebrations of the civil rights leader’s birthday in the nation, Luckett said.
“More than 1,000 people attend each year,” said Luckett, as one of the major annual events at JSU.
Paula Giddings will be the keynote speaker at the Convocation at JSU’s Rose E. McCoy Auditorium.
Giddings, a professor of African-American studies at Smith College, is the author of three books on the social and political history of African-American women: When and Where I Enter: The Impact on Black Women on Race and Sex in America; In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement; and, most recently, the biography of anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, Ida: A Sword among Lions.
She is a former book editor and journalist who has written extensively on international and national issues and has been published by the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeune Afrique (Paris), and other publications.
The Convocation, which is free of charge, will feature music and remarks by special guests.
Her talk will be followed at 11:45 a.m. with a For My People Awards Luncheon at the JSU Student Center Ballroom. Tickets for the luncheon are $10 but seating is limited to 150. “It usually sells out,” said Luckett. They are available in advance at the Walker Center in Ayer Hall.
To be honored at the luncheon are Gliddings, JSU President Emeritus Dr. John A. Peoples Jr., and Pamela D.C. Junior, manager of the Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center, along with the museum itself, Luckett said.
The 2015 Margaret Walker Centennial celebrations continue at 6 p.m. Jan. 22 at Jackson’s Eudora Welty Library with a talk on The Literary and Historical Importance of Margaret Walker’s Life by Luckett.
He will provide details of Walker’s interactions with the leading lights of literature of her time, including Richard Wright, W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, as well as her proper role as part of the Chicago literary movement.
The Margaret Walker Center and the Jackson Hinds Library System in December announced year-long plans to celebrate the 2015 Margaret Walker Centennial.
Called “This is My Century: The Life and Legacy of Margaret Walker,” the Centennial starts in January at JSU and includes activities at every library branch in Jackson/Hinds and events across the state.
The Centennial will figure largely in the Mississippi Humanities Council’s Symposium on the 150th Anniversary of Emancipation in April. There even will be a midsummer Jubilee Picnic at the historic Ayer Hall on the JSU campus. Her life and work will figure prominently at the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration in February and the Oxford Conference for the Book in April.
The Centennial will also by celebrated at Jackson’s Aug. 22, Mississippi Book Festival.
For more information, see: https://www.jsums.edu/margaretwalkercenter/