W.E.B. Du Bois Lecture: Dr. Bernard Lafayette, Jr.

We're pleased to announce that Dr. Bernard Lafayette, Jr. will be giving the 20th Annual W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Lecture on Thursday, February 18th at 7 p.m. in the McConnell Theater. A reception will follow.

Dr. Bernard Lafayette, Jr. has been a Civil Rights Movement activist, minister, educator, lecturer, and is an authority on the strategy of nonviolent social change. He cofounded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. He was also the leader of the Nashville Movement (1960), the Freedom Rides (1961), and the Selma Movement (1965). In 1962, he directed the Alabama Voter Registration Project, and was appointed National Program Administrator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In 1968, he was appointed National Coordinator of the Poor Peoples’ Campaign by Martin Luther King, Jr.  Dr. Lafayette has served as Director of Peace and Justice in Latin America; Chairperson of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development; Director of the PUSH Excel Institute; and minister of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tuskegee, Alabama. An ordained minister, he is the founder and national president of God-Parents Clubs, Inc., a national community-based program aimed at preventing the systematic incarceration of young Black youth.

Dr. Lafayette earned his B.A. from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, and his Ed.M. and Ed.D from Harvard University. Dr. Lafayette is a former President of the American Baptist College of ABT Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee; Scholars-in-Residence at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia; and Pastor emeritus of the Progressive Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Lafayette is currently a Distinguished-Senior-Scholar-in-Residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.