‘Beyond the Myth’ of Martin Luther King is speaker’s topic

Friday, February 4, 2005, By News Staff

‘Beyond the Myth’ of Martin Luther King is speaker’s topicFebruary 04, 2005Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

Writer, educator and activist Ekwueme Michael Thelwell will present the Syracuse University Department of African American Studies’ 22nd annual Martin Luther King Jr. Public Affairs Lecture on Feb. 10 at 7 p.m. in Shemin Auditorium, located in the Shaffer Art Building.

Thelwell will speak on “Beyond the Myth: The Martin Luther King Jr. We Knew and Loved.” A book signing and reception will follow in the Shaffer Atrium. The lecture is free and open to the public, and pay parking will be available in the Comstock, Waverly and Raynor lots and the University Avenue Garage.

Thelwell is the founding chair and current professor of literature and writing in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. A native of Jamaica, he received his early education at Jamaica College, attended Howard University and completed graduate work at the University of Massachusetts.

In the early1960s, Thelwell was a staff member at the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), working in the deep South and as Washington representative of the SNCC and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). He was centrally involved in the legislative mobilization for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the MFDP’s challenge to the seating of the congressmen from Mississippi in 1964.

Thelwell is author of the classic Jamaican novel “The Harder They Come” (Grove Press, 1980) and a collection of political and literary essays, “Duties, Pleasures and Conflicts (UMass Press, 1987). He recently completed the acclaimed autobiography of the late civil right leader and Pan-Africanist revolutionary Stokely Carmichael, “Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture)” (Scribner, 2003).

For more information on the lecture, call the Department of African American Studies at 443-4302 or visit http://aas.syr.edu.