Two dynamic civil rights speakers will highlight WSU’s annual Martin Luther King celebration on Jan. 22 and 29. WSU faculty are invited to incorporate the presentations into spring semester class curricula.
King described speaker Diane Nash as the “driving spirit in the nonviolent assault on segregation at lunch counters.” She led that sit-in movement, coordinated the 1961 freedom ride from Birmingham, Ala., to Jackson, Miss., helped organize the 1963 march on Washington, and was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to a national committee that promoted passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Speaker Michael Eric Dyson has been named one of the 150 most powerful African Americans by Ebony magazine. He has published two books about King, and his Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X (1994) was named one of the most important African American books of the 20th century. He “can rock the classroom and the chapel alike,” said a reporter in The Chronicle of Higher Education.