BLACK HISTORY MONTH events to remember

Davis

Lamptey

Evans

Harvey Johnson Jr., mayor of Jackson, Miss., will present the Neal-Marshall Lecture Wednesday (Feb. 6) at 12:30 p.m. in the atrium of the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Bloomington.

His topic will be “The Politics of the New South.”

Prior to being elected the first African-American mayor of Jackson in 1997, Johnson dedicated much of his time and expertise to helping economically depressed small towns with minority leadership obtain basic necessities such as water and sewer service. As the founder and executive director of the Mississippi Institute for Small Towns, a nonprofit agency, Johnson helped a number of towns in the Mississippi Delta with housing, community development and infrastructure needs.

Feb. 11
Angela Davis

Scholar, teacher and political activist Angela Davis, whose career has spanned five decades, will deliver the keynote address as part of Black History Month activities on the IU Bloomington campus. Her presentation is scheduled at 3 p.m. Monday, Feb. 11, at the Whittenberger Auditorium of the Indiana Memorial Union.

Her writings include a 1988 autobiography, Women, Race, and Class (1982), and Women, Culture, and Politics (1989).

She is currently a professor in the Department of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1994, she served as the University of California Presidential Chair in African-American and feminist studies.

Her visit is sponsored by the IU Office of the Vice President for Academic Support and Diversity and the IUB Office of Multicultural Affairs.

Feb. 11, 13
George Lamptey

The Hon. George Lamptey, Supreme Court judge of the Republic of Ghana, will speak in the Moot Court Room, IU School of Law-Bloomington, at noon Monday, Feb. 11. At the same time and location on Wednesday, Feb 13, he will join Amos Sawyer, former president of Liberia, and Oyibo Afoaku, director of IU’s new Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, for an interactive discussion of legal, political and social issues pertinent to the African continent. Lamptey was named to Ghana’s highest court in 2000, following a legal career in which he has witnessed dramatic transitions in Ghana’s political ideology.

Feb. 21
Mari Evans

Poet Mari Evans will speak at 7:30 p.m. at the Theatre/Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center in Bloomington, Thursday, Feb. 21. The Indianapolis-based poet, playwright, educator, essayist, and producer taught at both IU Bloomington and IUPUI during her career and received an honorary doctorate from IU in 2000. In a career spanning more than 40 years, Evans’ first poetry collection, Where Is All the Music? was published in 1968. The second collection, I Am a Black Woman, was published two years later and her place as an important new voice in the world of letters was begun. Her poem, Who Can Be Born Black? continues to be anthologized. Later collections include Nightstar: 1973-1978 (1981) and A Dark and Splendid Mass (1992). She also wrote the book for the 1979 musical Eyes, an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. She edited the anthology Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation (1984).