Samford University’s Howard College of Arts and Sciences will hold a symposium on the subject of “Where do we go from here? Martin Luther King Jr., Race, and America’s Future” April 16-17. The event–the inaugural Samford Stockham Symposium on Western Ideas and Institutions–will present a plenary address by 16th Street Baptist Church pastor Arthur Price and panel discussions featuring Samford faculty and distinguished guests from Birmingham-area institutions, including:
Jonathan Bass, Samford History Department chair and author of Blessed Are the Peacemakers and He Calls Me By Lightning: The Life of Caliph Washington and the Forgotten Saga of Jim Crow, Southern Justice, and the Death Penalty
Teresa Davidson, Samford associate professor of sociology
Wilson Fallin, professor history, University of Montevallo
Tondra Loder-Jackson, associate professor, Educational Foundations/ African American Studies, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Arthur Price, Pastor, 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Ala.
LeeAnn Reynolds, Samford associate professor of history and author of Maintaining Segregation: Children and Racial Instruction in the South, 1920-1955.
Jennifer Speights-Binet, Samford Geography Department chair
Samford history professor Jason Wallace, Stockham Chair of Western Intellectual History, is organizing the event in response to Samford president Andrew Westmoreland’s charge for the university to seriously engage with issues of race. “This symposium is a small attempt to offer such engagement,” Wallace said.
Wallace, who also leads the university’s Core Texts Program, also said that although Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail has long been used extensively in the university’s core classes, starting this fall it will be a required text for all 900+ Samford freshmen.
“To mark the introduction of this text as a requirement, as well as the somber occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, the Stockham Symposium is initiating this conversation about his legacy, race, and America’s future,” Wallace said.
Symposium Schedule
All events will be held in Brooks Hall Auditorium (room 134)
Monday April 16
3– 4:30 p.m. Panel Discussion
7 p.m. Plenary Speaker: The Rev. Arthur Price
Tuesday April 17
3 – 4 PM Student-Led Panel Discussion
To learn more contact wjwallac@samford.edu