University of West Georgia to Hold MLK Day Celebration

The University of West Georgia’s Office of Institutional Diversity will present a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration on Tues., Jan. 12 at 7 p.m. at UWG’s Campus Center Ballroom in Carrollton. The event, which is free and open to the public, will have the theme, “No Time to Sit Down Now.”

The speaker will be Elisabeth Omilami, co-director of the Atlanta-based Hosea Feed the Hungry program. Omilami is the daughter of the late civil rights leader Hosea Williams and his wife, Juanita.

Omilami is also an accomplished actress, having appeared in numerous films such as “Glory Road” and “Ray,” a biography of music legend Ray Charles.

For additional information, call 678-839-5400 or check online at www.westga.edu/diversity.

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Scholarly Access Now Available to the Martin Luther King Jr. Collection

Historian Clayborne Carson has had a love affair with everything “King” for most of his life. For the past quarter century, he’s been able to mesh that love with his professional passion. Now, Carson will expand that passion even more as he joins the Morehouse faculty as the Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Professor and executive director of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection.

As executive director of the more than 10,000-piece Collection, Carson will be responsible for mapping the vision and direction for the Collection, including developing programming for scholarly access and public education. One of his most important roles, however, will be to mentor future King scholars.

Though Carson's new responsibilities will be largely administrative, he also will teach a seminar at Morehouse on the "Life and Thought of Martin Luther King, Jr."

"When the College began looking for someone to manage oversight of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection, we knew that the ideal candidate would be able to develop and implement a strategic plan for the Collection and raise the visibility in the local and national community,” said Robert M. Franklin, president of Morehouse. “We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Carson to the Morehouse College faculty. He is a preeminent King scholar and brings to Morehouse time-proven expertise and vitality around this project,” he said.

For Carson, coming to Morehouse to head the Collection is serendipitous. He has been working with King’s personal writings since 1985, when the late Coretta Scott King asked him to direct a long-term project to edit and publish the papers of King, a 1948 graduate of Morehouse College.

“I’m honored by the opportunity to direct this historic project, which marks a new stage in my decades-long effort to ensure that all of King’s visionary ideas will be available for future generations,” Carson said.

Morehouse has been the steward of the Collection since 2006. It is the most comprehensive collection of King’s personal writings and books spanning from1946 to 1968 and includes thousands of King’s personal documents, notes, speeches and books from his personal library. Approximately 7,000 pieces of the Collection are handwritten items, including an early draft of the famous “I Have a Dream” speech, the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech and nearly 100 handwritten sermons from the 1950s and 1960s, some of which have never been published or studied before.

Scholarly Access Now Available
After nearly two years of dedicated work, the Robert W. Woodruff Library (RWWL) has organized and digitized 75 percent of the world-class Collection. The RWWL has served as archival custodian of the Collection since September 2006.

“Preserving and providing access to this Collection has been an honor for the Woodruff Library staff,” said Loretta Parham, RWWL CEO & Director. “Bringing this portion of Dr. King’s legacy to the world was a task staff approached with much reverence and the utmost professionalism. I believe the results of their efforts reflect well on Morehouse College, the Atlanta University Center and the library and archival professions.”

The Woodruff archival staff has created a state-of-the art Finding Aid and Digital Collection using the Archivists’ Toolkit and OCLC Contentdm©. By using the new Finding Aid and Digital Collection, the serious researcher and casual scholar will have the ability to view descriptions of every manuscript item in the Morehouse King Collection from anywhere in the world.

“The sheer volume and detail within the finding aid entries far surpass the norm for a collection of comparable size and will be invaluable to the scholarly community and community at-large,” Parham said.

Further, the quality, quantity and detail of the images within the Morehouse Digital Collection available for on-site review at the Woodruff Library are unmatched by any other King collection, Parham said.

Central to the development of the Morehouse King Collection Finding Aid and Digital Collection was the creation of the MLK Jr. Archival Collaborative, a partnership between the RWWL, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center (HGARC) at Boston University and Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Jr., Research & Education Institute. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the three institutions focused on the collaborative development of digital finding aids that could cross-reference related, similar or even identical items in the King collections housed at Woodruff and the HGARC.

Descriptions and terminology created through Stanford’s King Papers Project were instrumental in the completion of the Morehouse King Collection Finding Aid and a similar one in development at HGARC. Once both finding aids are complete, the Collaborative will move toward creating a one-of-a-kind Web interface to support the simultaneous, electronic search of multiple King collections.

History of the Collection
A group of Atlanta business and civic leaders, led by Mayor Shirley Franklin, raised $32 million to purchase the Collection just before it was to have gone up for auction at Sotheby’s in 2006. The deal brought the Collection home to Atlanta, the cradle of the civil rights movement and King’s birthplace. It was the wishes of the King Estate that the Collection be donated to Morehouse, from which King graduated in 1948.

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King Center to Present Health & Wellness Forum January 10

(BUSINESS WIRE)--The King Center will officially launch the 2009 MLK Birthday Observance January 10, 2009 by hosting and co-sponsoring an exciting new program with life-saving potential, “The Health & Wellness Forum.” The program, which will be held at locations within the King Historic Site, is free of charge to the public.

The Health and Wellness Forum, co-sponsored by Aetna, will include a three-session “Town Hall Meeting” on health, nutrition, recreation and wellness, conducted by leading medical experts, for Metro Atlanta communities; a “Health and Wellness Fair” providing free medical tests and screenings and “The Children’s Nutrition Education & Physical Activity Expo by C.H.O.I.C.E.S.”

“We are delighted to join with Aetna in offering the Health and Wellness Fair as a unique contribution to health security in our community,” said King Center President and CEO Isaac Newton Farris, Jr. in announcing the program. “Health security is a very important component of the Beloved Community of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Dream, and this program will make an annual contribution toward that goal.”

“Aetna is very pleased to join with the King Center in this vitally important effort,” said Cynthia Follmer, Aetna’s Georgia market president. “Raising awareness about serious illnesses like diabetes and obesity, which have been particularly harmful in the African American community, has been a long-standing concern for Aetna. We believe this project can make a positive difference toward improving health and wellness in the community.”

Noting a recent study by Georgia State University indicating that Georgia has the sixth-highest number of residents without insurance in the nation and ranks 11th in its percentage of the population lacking coverage, Elder Bernice A. King, chairperson of the Forum, explained, “Lack of access to adequate health coverage has reached crisis levels in the nation, and particularly in Georgia. To help address this challenge,” Rev. King added, “we will be offering, not only a wealth of life-saving information, but also free medical tests and screenings with a total value of more than $1,000.”

Targeting youth K-12, adults, educators and community leaders, participants will be screened and tested for cholesterol levels, blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, breast and skin cancer, lung capacity, asthma, dental health, vision and hearing. Organic donor information and chair massage will also be provided. The Town Hall meeting will provide life-saving information about childhood obesity, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, asthma and other medical disparities to empower people to achieve better health, wellness and nutrition and help correct disparities in Atlanta communities.

In addition to Elder King, expected participants include: leading pediatric pulmonologists Ann-Marie Brooks and Dr. Leroy Graham; Dr. Victor Blake ; Dr. Valerie Beckles, pediatrician and Aetna’s South Florida Medical Director; Chef Marvin Woods; the Andrew and Walter Young YMCA; Clinical Pharmacist Dr. Nicole Metzger, Mercer University; Sickle Cell Foundation Genetic Counselor, Phillip J. Oliver; The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Butler Street YMCA; C.H.O.I.C.E.S.; the Morehouse School of Medicine; the Everest Institute; VSNS, Merck & Co., Inc. and the Sickle Cells Foundation, along with other health care professionals and concerned institutions.

The Health and Wellness Forum will be followed by other major events in celebration of the King Holiday, including: “A King Celebration Concert” with The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (Jan. 15); the State of Georgia Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Commission Program (Jan. 16); the “Martin Luther King, Jr. Service Summit” (Jan. 15-19); the Annual “Salute to Greatness Awards Dinner” (Jan. 17) with Secretary of State nominee Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chick-fil-A Founder S. Truett Cathy; A Book Signing (Jan. 18) with Dr. Christine King Farris and Elder Bernice A. King and; the spiritual hallmark of America’s MLK Holiday, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Annual Commemorative Service in Ebenezer Baptist Church’s Horizon Sanctuary, with Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, Cal.) (Jan. 19)

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Dramatic Performer to be Part of Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration in Augusta

Jim Lucas, a dramatic performer known for his uncanny resemblance to Martin Luther King Jr., will be the featured speaker at the annual Tri-College Celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The ceremony, hosted in alternate years by the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta State University and Paine College, will be at noon Friday, Jan. 16 in the Natalie and Lansing B. Lee Jr. Auditorium at the Medical College of Georgia.

Mr. Lucas is an advocate of Dr. King’s philosophy of non-violent action to effect social change and has received national acclaim for dramatic recitations of his speeches. President Bill Clinton called him “the most authentic and exhilarating King I have ever seen.”

Mr. Lucas has been a guest speaker for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City and the National Baptist Convention. He has performed at more than 100 colleges and universities and throughout Germany, Japan and South Korea. His resume also includes television and film appearances in Ladder 49, Something the Lord Made, The West Wing, 24, The Wire and The District. He is currently co-starring in The Meeting, a play about the lives of Dr. King and Malcom X.

The annual Tri-College Celebration will also feature performances by choirs from all three institutions.

by Jennifer Hilliard
MCG

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Emory Celebrates King Week Jan. 19-27

Emory University's King Week, an annual celebration of the life, work and interests of Martin Luther King Jr., features a range of service, education, entertainment and memorial activities Jan. 19-27. King's spirit of activism and social justice will be highlighted in a keynote address, "Civil Rights: Then and Now," given by guest speaker, Julian Bond, chairman of the board, NAACP.

Other popular events taking place during King Week include a volunteer tree planting in the Martin Luther King Jr. historic district, a jazz vespers service in Cannon Chapel and the presentation of Community Service Awards sponsored by the Rollins School of Public Health and Goizueta Business School.

A schedule of activities follows. Visit the official King Week at Emory Web site for a full list of King Week activities. All events are free and open to the public.


Monday, Jan. 19

"Remembering Martin Luther King Through Service"
Volunteers will plant trees in the Martin Luther King Jr. historic district in conjunction with Trees Atlanta. 8:45 a.m.-1 p.m. 404-727-6268.


Tuesday, Jan. 20

Cannon Chapel Service
Service of Word and Table. Music by the Candler Singers. Sponsored by the Candler School of Theology. 11 a.m. Cannon Chapel, 515 Kilgo Circle, Emory. 404-727-6225.


Wednesday, Jan. 21

"Words That Changed the World"
Members of the Emory community will read speeches and letters written by prominent civil rights leaders from around the world. Sponsored by the Office of Residence Life. 12 p.m., Coca Cola Commons, Dobbs University Center.

Forum
"Women Talking With Women: Reflecting on Race, Ethnicity and Culture."
 Pamela Epps, moderator. This is an open discussion featuring women of different backgrounds and experiences. 4 p.m., Center for Women, Cox Hall, 569 Asbury Circle, Emory. 404-727-2031.

Forum
"Boys to Men: A Dialogue for Change." S.O.U.L high school participants will share poems and essays followed by intergenerational discussion groups will talk about change as a catalyst to success and the impact of positive change in the community. 6 p.m., Winship Ballroom, Dobbs University Center, 605 Asbury Circle, Emory. 404-727-4148.

Concert and Birthday Cake Celebration
Emory's Voices of Inner Strength gospel choir will perform. 8 p.m., Coca-Cola Commons, Dobbs University Center, 605 Asbury Circle, Emory. 404-727-8425.


Thursday, Jan. 22

Cannon Chapel Service
Service of Word. Sponsored by Candler School of Theology. 11 a.m., Cannon Chapel, 515 Kilgo Circle, Emory. 404-727-6225.

Community Service Awards
With speaker, Xernona Clayton, founder, Atlanta Trumpet Awards program. Sponsored by the Rollins School of Public Health and Goizueta Business School. 4 p.m., Boynton Auditorium, Goizueta Business School, 1300 Clifton Rd., Emory. 404-727-7697.

Jazz Vespers Service
Featuring Dwight Andrews, associate professor of music at Emory. 7 p.m., Cannon Chapel, 515 Kilgo Circle, Emory. 404-727-6153.


Friday, Jan. 23

Keynote Lecture
"Civil Rights: Then and Now." with speaker Julian Bond, chairman of the board, NAACP, guest speaker. 4 p.m., Cannon Chapel, 515 Kilgo Circle, Emory. 404-727-6847

Film
"Soul of Justice: Thelton Henderson's American Journey." The award-winning film profiles the life of Thelton Henderson, one of the first African Americans to be appointed to the federal bench. 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. Harland Cinema, Dobbs University Center, 605 Asbury Circle, Emory. 404-727-4636.


Sunday, Jan. 25

Worship Service
Reverend Dr. Calvin S. Morris, executive director of Chicago's Community Renewal Society and former director of the Atlanta Martin Luther King Center, will preach. Music provided by the Voices of Inner Strength gospel choir. 11 a.m., Cannon Chapel, 515 Kilgo Circle, Emory. Reception follows in Brooks Commons. 404-727-6225.


Tuesday, Jan. 27

Ecumenical Celebration–Oxford College
Annual service remembering Martin Luther King Jr. Interdenominational Choir and the "Voices of Praise" Oxford College Gospel Choir will sing. Reverend Harold Cobb and Henry M. White will speak. 7 p.m., Old Church, Oxford Campus, Oxford, Ga. 770-784-8392


Exhibits

"Slave, Soldier, Citizen: The Journey of William H. Scott." January 16- April 6. Level Ten, Woodruff Library.

"Beggars and Choosers: Motherhood is Not a Class Privilege in America." January 15- March 12. Schatten Gallery, level three, Woodruff Library.

"Interrupted Life: Incarcerated Mothers in the United States." January 15- March 12. Schatten Gallery, Level Three, Woodruff Library.

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Freedom Breakfast Planned for Jan. 16 at UGA

The sixth annual Freedom Breakfast honoring the life and work of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. will be held at 7:30 a.m. Jan. 16 at the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education Conference Center and Hotel. The speaker will be U.S. Rep. and civil rights activist John Lewis.

The President's Fulfilling the Dream Awards, which recognize individuals from UGA, the Athens area and surrounding counties who have made significant efforts to carry on King's work, will be presented at the breakfast, which is open to the public.

Tickets to the event run $18 each or $162 for a table of nine. Ticket request forms are available by contacting UGA's Office of Institutional Diversity. The deadline for submitting ticket request forms is Dec. 19. After that date, all tickets must be purchased in the OID. No tickets will be sold the day of the event. Seating is limited. For more information, call the Office of Institutional Diversity at 706/583-8195.

The breakfast is sponsored by the university and the Athens-Clarke County government and school district.

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