Slavery to Freedom
An American Odyssey
Visiting Minority Faculty Lecture Series
by Pat Grauer
| After only its second year, MSUCOM’s Visiting
Minority Faculty Program – "From Slavery to Freedom: An American
Odyssey" – has captured the university’s Excellence in Diversity Award.
The team who planned and executed the program
– William G. Anderson Sr., DO, Beth Courey, Sandra Kilbourn and Mary Krinock
– was honored at ceremonies April 11. |
Visiting Minority Faculty
Program organizers (from left) Mary Krinock, Beth Courey, William G.
Anderson and Sandra Kilbourn.
|
The series, which attracted renowned speakers
representative of American Civil Rights history, was cited as a "stellar
program that has benefited not only the college but the university and the
community as well."
|
Dr. Dorothy Cotton brought
out the soul of the civil rights movement with story and song.
|
In his nomination, Dean William D.
Strampel, DO,
noted "Though these speakers teach us much about the history of civil
rights, they also bring to the sessions a sense of personhood, a conviction and
inspiration that can only come from hard-fought experience, from the survival of
battles for justice that threatened their very lives.
"This program tells our faculty, staff,
students and alumni that diversity is valued and that its understanding and
celebration are vital to what it means to be an osteopathic physician. In short,
this series fits well into our self-perception as a college," he said. |
Among this year’s speakers were
The Rev. Dr. Joseph Roberts, pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist
Church, who decried the modern-day slave trade, noting, among other justice
issues, that more than 50,000 women and children were brought into the US last
year as sexual slaves
Dick Gregory, comedian, author and non-violent social activist, who discussed an
eclectic menu of interests, including multiple examples of racism and injustice,
and kept the audience laughing at themselves throughout
Dr. Dorothy F. Cotton, former educational director for the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, who shared stirring stories of the movement in word and
song
The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., senior pastor of Trinity United Church of
Christ, Chicago, who traced African American language, song, linguistics and
stories back to their African roots.
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