Martha Schnee ’15 in a self-portrait in Marfa, Texas.

In the end, it all worked out fine. Better than fine, even.

Martha Schnee ’15, back at 乐播传媒. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

But around 8:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day 2015, as a sleep-deprived Martha Schnee ’15 was climbing into the pickup truck of a rancher she did not know in Marfa, Texas, she had some doubts.

“This guy’s wearing a cowboy hat and a bandanna and he’s 30-something. And he says, ‘All right, we’re going to my ranch,'” says Schnee. “I look down and there’s a gun two inches from my left foot.

“I was sort of conflicted about it. But I said to myself, ‘All right, I’m just going to do it.’ ”

Ah, the things 乐播传媒 students will take on for thesis. Schnee (rhymes with “hay”) was doing field work in Marfa for an honors thesis exploring questions of identity 鈥� civic, cultural and personal 鈥� and representation. The rancher, hearing about her work from a third party, had called out of the blue to invite Schnee on his daily routine.

A high desert town of about 2,000 souls in far western Texas, Marfa’s wider claim to fame is its unlikely status as a center for Minimalist art, thanks to the three-decade presence of the late artist Donald Judd.

“You’re driving through the desert for hours and then you just happen upon this tiny one-stop-light town 鈥� and there are contemporary art galleries lining the streets mixed with dilapidated buildings,” says Schnee, an American cultural studies major from Newton, Mass.

Workers on a rooftop in Marfa. (Martha Schnee ’15)

Schnee had spent 24 hours in Marfa during a cross-country drive early in 2014, and came away captivated. It seemed to say something about Marfa that, right off the bat during that first visit, she met poet CAConrad, a favorite of hers, and ended up having lunch with him.

(In typical small-乐播传媒-world fashion, Conrad later turned up at 乐播传媒 to read from his work, invited by English professor Eden Osucha 鈥� at the time Schnee’s thesis adviser. With Osucha on leave, Melinda Plastas of the women and gender studies program is now Schnee’s adviser, with guidance on ethnographic research coming from anthropologist Josh Rubin.)

A photographer and writer, Schnee is weaving her thesis from images, interviews with 13 diverse Marfa residents and creative nonfiction writing. If the mythology of the Old West is part of the context, Schnee is hewing closer to a more recent scholarly movement known as New Western History. She’s using the town as a case study in how, as stories of place are told, attitudes about race, class, gender and the environment determine whose voices prevail.

The thesis, she explains, examines past and present Marfa narratives for what, and who, they do and don’t represent. “What don鈥檛 we normally see in depictions of the place? Whose voices can we hear more loudly, more clearly? Whose voices are quieter?”

Get along, little doggie. (Martha Schnee ’15)

And one of the identities at play in Schnee’s Marfa project is her own, as she explores the dynamic role of self in her perceptions and in others’ perceptions of her. “I’m not ignoring the fact that it鈥檚 a very subjective project,” she says.

“I felt strange about my place as a researcher in this space that already seems constantly scrutinized. I felt that I was adding to a problem in some ways, and that was a really strange position to be in.” Social scientists describe it as reflexivity: the mutual influence exercised by the researcher and the researched.

Photographing Marfa residents was especially fraught for Schnee, who is acutely aware of the power dynamics that a lens can generate. Whose image is it, anyhow? “One woman told me there’s a zoo animal kind of feel for the people that live there,” she says, “and after I heard that, I rethought a lot of what I was doing.”

Ultimately, she says, “I was just trying to come in with an open mind, and not just take these people and use them for my own work. A lot of the idea behind American cultural studies, and my project itself, is to ideally make something that I can give back to the community. It’s about uncovering hidden power structures, connecting those back to history and then trying to figure out a way to give something back through making the invisible more visible.鈥�

Carpenters put up a wall frame in Marfa, Texas. (Martha Schnee ’15)

Despite her misgivings about appropriating Marfa’s identity, even as she was investigating how such things happen, Schnee left the little town “blown away,” as she says, by the human kindness she encountered.

“Nearly everybody I encountered was willing to help me,” she says. That generosity even included a resident’s invitation to stay in his home during his absence.

And, of course, the invitation to witness a few hours of a rancher’s life. (We’ll call the rancher Sam, as ethnographic researchers are obliged to protect their subjects’ anonymity.) The five-hour tour of Sam’s operation outside of Marfa, says Schnee, “just, of course, ended up being the most amazing experience.鈥� The rancher fed his hundreds of cattle, checked their whereabouts and broke the ice crusting their water supplies so they could drink.

Early on, Sam pointed out a group of cows on a hill acting standoffish, which told him that there were new calves. “It’s New Year’s Day and I’m seeing these calves being born into the world, surrounded by desert and distant mountains, and the sky is enormous,” Schnee recalls. “And I remembered how afraid I was at first, and smiled at the situation, at the niceness of this complete stranger.”

Martha Schnee ’15 captures a self-portrait reflected in the facade of a Marfa art gallery.

Sounds dreamy or at least cinematic, but in terms of her thesis, the encounter with the rancher was a definitive episode during Schnee’s three weeks in Marfa. Sam personified a key conflict of identity in Marfa: Traditional Texas, with all the attendant realities and myths, vs. the international art destination.

“He talked a lot about art and not understanding it, and the experiences of meeting all these people coming through town,” says Schnee.

Sam told her, “I want to show you what my life is like so you don’t have this misperception of what I do. If you see it, you can go back to the East Coast and talk about actually experiencing what I do,” Schnee recalls.

“And I thought, what could be better? This immersive experience in another reality was exactly what I wanted. And all it took was sacrificing a few hours of sleep and being OK with getting into a stranger’s truck.”

A scene from Ava DuVernay’s film “Selma.”

Selma, director Ava DuVernay’s acclaimed depiction of Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign to secure equal voting rights for African Americans, is the subject of five screenings, as well as a panel discussion, at 乐播传媒 from Feb. 27 through March 1.

The film will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 27; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28; and at 2 and 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 1, in Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center at 乐播传媒, 75 Russell St.

Associate Professor of Psychology Michael Sargent. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

The panel discussion by 乐播传媒 faculty, staff and students will immediately follow the first March 1 screening, also in Olin 104.

Sponsored by the 乐播传媒 Filmboard and the Office of Intercultural Education, the event is open to the public. Admission is $1. For more information, please contact ckenyon@bates.edu or kpayne@bates.edu.

The 乐播传媒 panelists are:
鈥⒙犅� 聽Marcus Bruce, Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies;
鈥⒙犅� 聽Stephen Engel, assistant professor of politics;
鈥⒙犅� 聽Hilmar Jensen, associate professor of history;
鈥⒙犅� 聽Gwen Lexow, associate athletic director and Title IX officer;
鈥⒙犅� 聽Joshua Manson, a 乐播传媒 senior from Hastings-On-Hudson, New York;
鈥⒙犅� 聽and moderator Claudia Calhoun, visiting assistant professor of rhetoric.

DuVernay’s Academy Award-nominated film chronicles three tumultuous months in 1965, when King (David Oyelowo) led a dangerous campaign to secure equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition. The epic march from Selma to Montgomery culminated in President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant victories for the civil rights movement.

“The film has renewed broader questions about the historical accuracy of films based on true events, and how much freedom a director should take in altering events to tell a compelling story,” says Michael Sargent, associate professor of psychology at 乐播传媒. Sargent organized the 乐播传媒 event with Charles Kenyon, a senior from East Amherst, New York, and Kai Payne of Jamaica, New York.

“One of us who organized this panel heard a story of 乐播传媒 students going to see the film and at least one wanting an opportunity to discuss it then,” Sargent says. “This is our effort to give 乐播传媒 students, faculty and staff, as well as interested members of the surrounding community, a chance to see Selma and engage in a thoughtful discussion of its content.

“And having a panel that collectively has such broad-ranging expertise means that our discussion will be grounded in historical context.”

Peniel Joseph, Tufts University historian and author, delivers 乐播传媒’ 2015 MLK Day keynote address. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

What does the Black Lives Matter movement really want?

Yes, it’s one of those questions that can be driven more by hostility than curiosity. Still, in his keynote address during Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances at 乐播传媒 on Jan. 19, historian Peniel Joseph had an answer ready.

“What they want is a new New Deal. They want a greater Great Society,” said Joseph, a professor at Tufts, author and authority on the Black Power movement. “They want an expansive vision of social, economic and political justice that connects democratic ideals to democratic reality.”

From left, 乐播传媒 Dean of the Faculty Matt Auer, President Clayton Spencer and Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote speaker Peniel Joseph have a word as the event begins. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

The divorce of ideals from reality was central to the talk, titled Reimagining Martin Luther King Jr. in the Age of Obama and the Age of Ferguson, that an energetic Joseph offered in the Peter J. Gomes Chapel.

Joseph described a mythologized King, the “prince of peace” that for many has supplanted the reality of King’s last years, when his increasingly radical views made even some fellow black leaders uncomfortable. Joseph also outlined the current resurgence of institutionalized racism in a more insidious form that avoids the language of prejudice while serving its goals.

Against this context, Joseph suggested that the Black Lives Matter movement is a sign of hope 鈥� for defenders of both social justice and, in fact, democracy itself 鈥� because it supports idealism with effective activism.

In her welcome to a capacity crowd at the Chapel, 乐播传媒 President Clayton Spencer was pleased to point out that the college’s MLK Day committee had picked the day’s theme 鈥� From Selma to Ferguson: 50 Years of Nonviolent Dissent 鈥� in September, prior to the grand jury decisions about the police shootings in Ferguson and New York City that elevated outrage to a new level.

The Gomes Chapel audience during the 2015 MLK Day keynote address by Tufts University historian and author Peniel Joseph. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

Anticipating Joseph, Spencer said that 乐播传媒’ choice of theme “shows that we on this campus were prepared to challenge ourselves to acknowledge and act on the ongoing stark gap, nearly five decades after the death of Martin Luther King, between the depth of our ideals as a society and our lived reality.”

乐播传媒 people have been prepared for that challenge for decades, she said, pointing the important legal victories for civil rights won during the mid-20th century by John P. Davis ’25 and James Nabrit ’52.

Son of a union member who first took him out on a picket line when he was 8 years old, Joseph said, “I come to activism from a real-world point of view.” He provided both historical and moral context for the day’s programming at 乐播传媒.

Joseph devoted much of his talk to a whirlwind review of signal events in the civil rights movement from 1954 to 1965, as King became the leading voice of the movement. These years, which Joseph called the “heroic period” of the movement, began with the U.S. Supreme Court finding that school segregation is unconstitutional in Brown vs. Board of Education; and ended with a year marked with the marches on Selma, the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Watts riots.

If these events were news to many younger listeners in the Gomes Chapel, what came next may have been ear-opening to some older folks as well. Joseph pointed out that during the last three years of his life, King became increasingly radicalized, coming out in opposition to the war in Vietnam and in favor of a guaranteed income for impoverished Americans.

Marcus Bruce, Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies, and Associate Dean of Students James Reese listen to the MLK Day keynote address. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

“We need to be willing to speak truth to power, no matter the cost,” King said, and the cost to him was losing access to the political establishment. “There [were] no more massive standing ovations by the mainstream for Dr. King in 1966, ’67 and ’68,” Joseph said.

In Chicago, even black leaders 鈥� fearing the loss of such patronage as was available to them from Mayor Richard J. Daley’s benighted political machine 鈥� told King he had gone too far.

Today, Joseph said, it’s not uncommon to point to Barack Obama’s presidency as a symbol of how far civil rights have advanced in the U.S. And yet, “the reality that we live in is a much, much, much more complex reality,” Joseph said.

If recent events in Ferguson, Staten Island and Cleveland 鈥� where a 12-year-old African America boy carrying a toy gun was killed by police 鈥� are high-profile examples of institutionalized racism, Joseph pointed out that conditions for African Americans have gone backward in more deep-seated ways as well, from school segregation to incarceration rates to unemployment and poverty.

Many black children, Joseph pointed out, have their first experience with the criminal justice system when they are arrested in school 鈥� as young as age 5 or 6.

“We had a better conversation about race and racism in 1965 than we do now,” Joseph said. “At least in 1965, we admitted that there were structures of racism and racial segregation.” Now our society practices a sort of “color-blind racism,” he said, where laws and policies achieve racist ends while never explicitly mentioning race.

John Smedley, Tim Clough and Dale Chapman — aka the Three Point Trio — opened the King Day keynote event with jazz. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

“Even as we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.,” Joseph said, “we divorce King the icon from King the political activist who’s willing to speak truth to power and who said that ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’

“We celebrate the dreamer, but we divorce the dreamer from the actual dream.”

The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, Joseph said, shows that the time may not be past, after all, for realizing the dream.

“The most important, and really hopeful and optimistic, aspect that we’re left with, when you think about ‘from Selma to Ferguson,’ is the fact that so many young people, like in the 1960s, are actually not just demonstrating and protesting 鈥� they are organizing.

“They are organizing on behalf of social, political, economic and racial justice. And they are organizing to try to fill that gap between democracy as an ideal in America, and democracy as an actual living, breathing fact.”

Marcus Bruce, Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

In a lecture celebrating his appointment as the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at 乐播传媒, Marcus Bruce ’77 gives a lecture titled The Ambassadors: W.E.B. Du Bois, The Paris Exposition of 1900 and African American Culture at 4:45 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5, in Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk), Room G52.

The event is open to the public at no cost. A reception follows. For more information, please call 207-786-8371.

The lecture will examine a historic moment for Du Bois, a civil rights activist and author who cofounded the NAACP in 1909, and for African Americans and African American culture.

In a major turning point in his life and career, Du Bois, a 32-year-old sociology professor at Atlanta University in Georgia, traveled to the Paris Exposition of 1900 to witness the unveiling of the American Negro Exhibit.

This government-sponsored display of books, photographs, charts and artwork was created to show the progress of African Americans since the Emancipation Proclamation.

One of three exhibit organizers, Du Bois contributed a sociological study to the exhibit titled the “Georgia Negro” and curated a landmark collection of photographs of African Americans. It was also for this exhibit that Du Bois wrote what is considered to be his most famous declaration: “The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line.”

Chair of the religious studies department at 乐播传媒, Bruce teaches American religious history, religion and literature, African-American studies, and American cultural studies. He appears as a source in the new documentary Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, in which filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris examines how photography has affected the lives of black Americans.

He is also a featured source in Joanne Burke’s 2012 documentary When African Americans Came to Paris. Bruce received a master’s degree and a doctorate from Yale. He returned to 乐播传媒 to teach in 1987.

Marian McPartland, center, flanked by drummer Joe Morello and bassist Bill Crow. McPartland is portrayed in a 乐播传媒 screening of the documentary “In Good Time.” (Courtesy of Films by Huey)

The Museum of Art exhibition Convergence: Jazz, Films and the Visual Arts expands in autumn 2014 with films, panels and lectures beginning with a talk by the founder of Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies at 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5, in Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

The talk by Robert O’Meally, who is also a former director of the Center for Jazz Studies and serves as the Zora Neale Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, is titled Looking at the Music: Jazz and the Visual Arts. A panel discussion and an additional lecture take place on Oct. 1 and 27 (information below).

Events related to Convergence, as well as admission to the exhibition itself, are open to the public at no cost. An important exhibition of art exploring jazz and African American culture, Convergence is on display at 乐播传媒 through Dec. 13. Learn more at bates.edu/news/2014/06/04/convergence/.

The museum is also presenting Encountering Maine. Drawn from the museum’s collection, this exhibition comprises depictions of the state by such well-known artists as Marsden Hartley, Bernard Langlais, Melonie Bennett, Dahlov Ipcar and Robert Indiana. Encountering Maine shows through Oct. 12. Learn more at bates.edu/news/2014/06/04/encountering/.

The museum is located at 75 Russell St. Hours are 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday (until 7 p.m. on Wednesdays during the academic year). For more information, contact 207-786-6158.

The Convergence film series begins with In Good Time, The Piano Jazz of Marian McPartland at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 15, in Olin 104. This piece by renowned Maine filmmaker Huey documents the life of the legendary McPartland through interviews and performances. A composer and radio host as well as pianist, McPartland arrived in America in 1948 and established herself as a leading figure in the male-dominated jazz world.

Louis Armstrong figures prominently in “Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns.” (Courtesy of the Frank Driggs Collection)

The film series continues through the fall with the 10 episodes of Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns, the widely acclaimed series premiered on public television in 2001. This musical epic chronicles the history of jazz from its pre-World War I beginnings to the modern day. Showings take place in Olin 104 at 7:30 p.m. on these Mondays: Sept. 22 and 29; Oct. 6, 13 and 20; Nov. 3, 10 and 17; and Dec. 1 and 8.

The Convergence exhibition resulted from a partnership between the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, and the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City. Three leading authorities on the arts surrounding the jazz movement, all connected with the Driskell Center, discuss the exhibition at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 1, in Olin 104.

The speakers are:

• David Driskell, for whom the center is named. A distinguished artist and collector, this part-time Maine resident is one of the leading authorities on African American art and serves as curator of the Camille O. and William H. Cosby Collection of African American Art;
• Robert Steele, a lifelong collector of African American art who became the founding director of the Driskell Center in 2004 following a career teaching psychology at the University of Maryland.
• Curlee Raven Holton, a painter, printmaker, professor of art at Lafayette College and acting executive director of the Driskell Center.

The speaker series concludes with Jazz Under the Lens, a lecture and screening relating to an important collection of jazz films assembled by the late John Baker, an Ohio lawyer, at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 27, in Olin 104. The speaker is Gregory Carroll, chief executive officer of the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Mo., which now holds the John H. Baker Jazz Film Collection.

The screening will include historic Soundies, short musical films from the 1940s that anticipated modern music videos.

Assistant Professor of English Ther铆 Pickens. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

Do the people you touch make you the person you are? If you are breathing, can your oppressors claim that you do not exist? Is a seemingly robust Magic Johnson really the best person to promote AIDS and HIV awareness?

Questions like these drive a new book by a 乐播传媒 professor examining the literary uses of bodily awareness in writings by Arab American and African American authors.

The first book-length cross-racial study of narratives reflecting those groups, New Body Politics: Narrating Arab and Black Identity in the Contemporary United States is the creation of Ther铆 Pickens, assistant professor of English. The book was published in February by Routledge.

Putting these two cultural traditions “into conversation with one another,” says Michelle Wright, who teaches African American studies at Northwestern University, “takes the reader through a dazzling array of topics, from the construction of minority subjecthood and family politics to illness and medical practices.”

Pickens’ focus is the narrative use of so-called embodied experience — “what it is to live inside a body,” she explains. “It isn’t just that we see, but that we interpret what we see. It isn’t just that we touch or breathe, but that our touching or breathing has meaning.”

She says, “The book aims to answer the question of how blacks and Arabs in the late 20th and early 21st centuries make meaning out of bodily sense — how they mobilize their embodied experience, with all of its various and itinerant parts, to create social and political critique.”

Pickens argues that African Americans and Arab Americans narratives tend to rely on the body’s fragility, rather than its exceptional strength or emotion, to create critiques.

Authors discussed in New Body Politics include:

• Palestinian American poet Suheir Hammad, who draws on black feminist poetics and hip-hop aesthetics to explore the metaphorical power of breathing and the circumstances surrounding occupied Palestine;
• novelists Alicia Erian (Towelhead) and Danzy Senna (Symptomatic) who, writing from Arab American and African American perspectives, explore the relationship between touch and the sense of self; and
• Lebanese American writer Rabih Alameddine, whose fiction offers a contemporary parallel to a question posed to blacks decades ago by African American scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois: How does it feel to be a problem?

A native of New Jersey, Pickens grew up “in a multiracial, multilingual, multi-ethnic space. And that setting really prompted me to think about what it means to constantly be aware of one’s difference and to engage the difference of others.”

She is acutely cognizant of literature’s power not just to enrich inner life but also to point the way to material change. “I think if we can put literature back into the conversation, then we can truly imagine a better world,” she says.

“The human capacity for storytelling is absolutely amazing and is one of the things that crosses cultures and crosses time.”

Pickens, who came to 乐播传媒 in 2011, bases her research on the study of the nature of awareness itself — a branch of philosophy called phenomenology. In addition to Arab American and African American literatures, her interests include disability studies — a field that bears on “New Body Politics.”

“Disability takes seriously this issue of your body mattering. The field of disability studies asks us to consider disability as a social category” — a category to which, but for the grace of good fortune, “everyone can belong.”

Pickens received an undergraduate degree in comparative literature from Princeton in 2005 and a doctorate in comparative literature from UCLA in 2010. Her poetry has appeared in Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, Save the Date and Disability Studies Quarterly.

Her blog and a schedule of appearances are featured at .

Journalist Gary Younge offers the Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote address, an analysis of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, in the Gomes Chapel at 乐播传媒 on Jan. 20. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

More than 50 years later, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom has become as much cultural touchstone as historical milestone.

Even as its context and complexities have faded from mass awareness, the March has evolved into a symbol of progress for civil rights. Epitomizing this perception is Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, his best-known address.

乐播传媒 dedicated its 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Day programming to the March, the Speech and their relevance today. And two speakers during the morning keynote session on Jan. 20 offered quite different perspectives on the events of Aug. 28, 1963.

As always, Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2014 at 乐播传媒 encompassed a rich schedule of programming that included Sunday evening’s memorial service and on Monday, a debate with Morehouse College, numerous workshops and panels, and the sold-out evening performance by Sankofa. Learn more:

• A slideshow of MLK Day 2014 events at 乐播传媒.
• Video of the keynote session and the 乐播传媒-Morehouse debate.
• The full schedule of activities.
• More about the day’s participants.
• Members of Sankofa preview their performance.
• A report from the debate.

An inspired and inspirational view came from someone else named King who happened to be on the scene in D.C. that day 鈥� U.S. Sen. Angus King.

乐播传媒 President Clayton Spencer chats with U.S. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) during the college’s 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote session on Jan. 20 in the Gomes Chapel. King offered reminiscences of the 1963 March on Washington. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

In remarks to about 400 people in Gomes Chapel, King said that hundreds of thousands of people came together in the nation’s capital that hot August day in the service of an “idea that’s important and still radical today: All men and women are created equal.”

A more granular view came from the keynote speaker, English journalist Gary Younge, author of a 2013 book that examines both the history of the March and the Speech, and their place in today’s context.

It’s true that the “Dream” speech marks a transition after which “the question of American apartheid is no longer alive,” said Younge. Yet, if legal segregation is dead, racism is alive and well, and the kind of profound systemic change that King dreamed of still eludes us.

The keynote session began with jazz by the Three Point Trio and a welcome by keynote host and Associate Dean of Students James Reese. Next, the college’s new dean of the faculty reminded his listeners that 乐播传媒 explicitly links education and service, privilege and obligation.

“Hand in hand with study and contemplation is informed and ethical action,” said Matthew Auer, who came on board as dean and vice president for academic affairs in July 2013.

With a rhetorical tip of the hat to the 乐播传媒 mission statement and Martin Luther King mentor Benjamin Mays ’20, Auer said, “the emancipating potential of the liberal arts is not a spectator sport.” That theme became a motif of the morning.

President Clayton Spencer introduced Angus King, former Maine governor elected Independent senator in 2012. King, who as a 19-year-old watched the March on Washington program from his perch in a tree on the National Mall, reprised his r, at which he represented the Senate.

“As it was once said of Churchill, Martin Luther King on that day mobilized the English language and marched it into war,” King said, “and in the process caught the conscience of a nation.鈥�

Midway through the program, Acting Multifaith Chaplain Emily Wright-Magoon echoed Auer’s theme as she read pledges for action gathered from the audience at Sunday night’s MLK worship service.

Accompanying Wright-Magoon were Gospelaires Brittney Davis 鈥�14, Megan Guynes 鈥�11 and Courtney Parsons 鈥�15, who sang a luminous “This Little Light of Mine” in three-part harmony. This welcome addition recognized the role of women in the civil rights movement generally, and specifically honored three singers present at the March: Mahalia Jackson, Camilla Williams and Marian Anderson.

Members of the Gospelaires perform during 乐播传媒’ 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote session. From left, Brittney Davis ’14, Megan Guynes ’11 and Courtney Parsons ’15. (Sarah Crosby/乐播传媒 College)

Charles Nero, head of the MLK Day planning committee at 乐播传媒 and professor of rhetoric and American cultural studies, let on that keynote speaker Younge had originally planned to speak at 乐播传媒 during last year’s MLK events. But Younge, who writes for the British newspaper The Guardian, instead covered President Obama’s inauguration.

The timing was advantageous, though, because in the meantime Younge got a book published: The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.鈥檚 Dream.

At 乐播传媒, Younge painted a picture of events behind the March that, paradoxically, made it seem both inevitable and fortuitous.

For instance, local civil rights protests in the months before the March were cresting, all but necessitating some kind of grand national gesture. Quoting author Ryszard Kapuscinski, Younge cited the psychological tipping point where “a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid . . . Man gets rid of fear and feels free. Without that there would be no revolution.”

“People don’t know when there’s history in the making. They just know they have to do something,” Younge added, referring to Sen. King’s earlier聽exhortation to seize opportunities for action when they appear.

Serendipity helped to define the March as well. King, for example, didn’t initially plan to use the “I Have a Dream” language, a staple of his repertoire, during the March. And yet, at the right moment, he set aside his notes and his lecturer persona, and preached those immortal words 鈥� perhaps persuaded by gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who sat nearby urging him on.

Occurring during an event designed as King’s introduction to the nation, the Speech had something for everybody. For patriots, roots in foundational American values; for liberals, appeals to the labor and peace movements. And African Americans could be supremely proud of this demonstration of black will and intelligence.

Appreciating the presenters during the 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote session at 乐播传媒 College. (Sarah Crosby/乐播传媒 College)

But today’s exalted view of King and the Speech differs dramatically from its perception five decades ago, Younge pointed out. In the 1960s, King was unpopular among whites, a sentiment exacerbated by his growing opposition to the Vietnam War, which many Americans supported, and to the capitalist system.

Younge concluded that the nation has mistaken a victory in the battle against segregation for a victory in the war against racism. By many measures, African Americans have gained little in terms of prosperity and well-being since the March.

It’s true, Younge concluded, that “King’s speech was an appeal to hearts and minds, the vision of a society in which race was not the defining and crippling factor that it once was, and to some extent still remains.”

“But he did not dream of better people. He dreamt of a better system.”

King Day keynote speaker and “The Speech” author Gary Younge. (Courtesy of The Guardian)

Angus King, former Maine governor and current U.S. senator, and Gary Younge, author of a book that explores the continuing resonance of the “I Have a Dream” speech made by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963, are among presenters at 乐播传媒 College’s King Day observance on Monday, Jan. 20.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington, Aug. 28, 1963. (Rowland Scherman / National Archives)

Titled The Dream 50 Years Later: Who Are We?, 乐播传媒’ 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Day activities will examine that landmark speech and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that occasioned it.

A college distinguished by the depth and extent of its attention to the King holiday, 乐播传媒 begins its observance with the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Worship Service at 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 19, in the Gomes Chapel, 275 College St. Performance artist Carvens Lissaint provides the sermon for this year’s service.

Programming continues through Monday, Jan. 20. The keynote session, including Younge’s keynote and King鈥檚 remarks, begins at 9 a.m., also in the Gomes Chapel. The annual Benjamin Elijah Mays Debate takes place at 1 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Workshop sessions are scheduled throughout the afternoon. Concluding the observance is the annual performance by the student group Sankofa at 7 p.m., also in the Olin Concert Hall (sold out, but alternate viewing arrangements are available; see below).

All these events are open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required for the debate, available at .

See a video preview of the Sankofa performance.

The college will livestream the King Day keynote address and debate at bates.edu/live.

For more information, please call 207-786-6400 or visit the King Day page on the 乐播传媒 website: bates.edu/mlk/

Memorial Worship Service

Spoken word artist Carvens Lissaint.

A Haitian American performance artist living in New York City, Carvens Lissaint offers the annual King Worship Service sermon, Break Every Chain (A Call for Freedom).

Lissaint established himself as a spoken word artist in 2006 and went on to win multiple poetry slams across the country and to coach award-winning teams. He made his transition into musical theater in 2007 as a part of the Hip Hopera Theater troupe, and debuted his high-energy one-man show Walk in 2009.

The service also features music and prose by students, including the 乐播传媒 Gospelaires. For more information about this event only, please call 207-786-8272.

Theme and keynote

乐播传媒 will use the King holiday to commemorate and reflect upon the 50th anniversary of the momentous 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and King’s beloved “I Have a Dream” speech.

U.S. Sen. Angus King.

Angus King, who attended the March on Washington as a teenager, will offer reminiscences of the event. King was sworn in as Maine鈥檚 first Independent U.S. senator in 2013. He has worked as an attorney, a television host and an entrepreneur in the energy industry, and served two terms in the 1990s as Maine鈥檚 governor, one of the most popular in the state鈥檚 history.

Younge is an author, broadcaster and award-winning columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian. He writes a monthly column, “Beneath the Radar,” for The Nation magazine and is the Alfred Knobler Fellow for The Nation Institute.

Published in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the march and “I Have a Dream” address, Younge’s book The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Dream (Haymarket Books) provides a modern critical analysis of why that speech endures in American culture.

Younge, writes a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “provides just enough context to convey the anticipation and chaos leading up to the speech and adds meaningful layers to the rhetoric. Vivid details instill the emotional importance of the event.”

Born in England, Younge joined The Guardian in 1994. In 1996, he was sent to The Washington Post after receiving the Lawrence Stern fellowship, which assigns a young British journalist to the Post’s national desk each year.

His first book, No Place Like Home: A Black Briton’s Journey Through the American South (Picador, 1999), was published in Britain to much acclaim and released in the U.S. in 2002. His other books include Who Are We鈥擜nd Should It Matter in the 21st Century? (Nation Books, 2011) and Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States (New Press, 2006).

Younge was named Newspaper Journalist of the Year by the Ethnic Minority Media Awards in the U.K. from 2002 to 2004. In 2009, he was awarded the prestigious James Cameron Prize for his reports on the election of Barack Obama.

Debate, exhibits, workshops and Sankofa

Sankofa director Bethel Kifle ’14 acknowledges appreciation from the audience and cast at the end of the 2012 Sankofa performance. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

The annual Benjamin Elijah Mays Debate with students from Morehouse College honors one of 乐播传媒’ most distinguished alumni. A member of the class of 1920, Mays was an outstanding debater. As president of Morehouse College, he became a lifelong mentor and adviser to King.

This year students from 乐播传媒 and Morehouse debate the motion “This House believes King’s dream is unattainable.”

The concurrent afternoon workshop sessions, convened by members of the 乐播传媒 community and visiting guests including community organizers, explore King’s contributions and legacy through a variety of topics and presentation formats. Held at various locations on campus, the sessions begin at 11 a.m., and 3 and 4:20 p.m. See the complete schedule.

One of the most moving and popular aspects of the King Day activities at 乐播传媒, the student-created Sankofa event uses myriad performance arts to reflect on the diversity of black experiences. This year’s theme is聽H.O.M.E.

Monday night鈥檚 Sankofa performance is sold out, but overflow viewing will take place in Room 204 of Pettigrew Hall and there is a wait list for Olin Concert Hall seating. Sankofa has opened its dress rehearsal at 5:30 p.m. Saturday to the public. Free, but tickets required, available at .

The George and Helen Ladd Library will mark the holiday with a display of publications by and about King, including聽The Speech and other works by keynote speaker Younge examining the legacy of the U.S. civil rights movement. The exhibit takes place from Monday, Jan. 6, through Friday, Jan. 24. For library hours and other information, please visit bates.edu/library/.

Finally, depicting the life and times of the Rev. King, a charcoal mural made in 1999 by drawing students working with Pamela Johnson, associate professor of art and visual culture, will be exhibited in the Gomes Chapel Jan. 13-Feb.13.

Chester Higgins Jr. Photograph by Sanviki Chapman.

Chester Higgins Jr., a photographer for The New York Times whose images have appeared in exhibitions all over the world, visits 乐播传媒 to give a talk titled Dancing with My Spirit at 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 1, in Room G65 of Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

The event is sponsored by the Learning Associates Program and the programs in African American and American cultural studies. For more information, please call 207-786-8296.

“With the camera I embrace the spirit that is the essence of all existence,” Higgins has said. His mission is to embrace, to reaffirm and to challenge. Higgins鈥� images resonate with a spiritual echo that maintains the image and frees it from the constraints of time.

Much of Higgins’ imagery is inspired by issues of identity. Over the past five decades, he has produced a visual collection of compelling imagery reflecting a sensitive and in-depth diary of his explorations of the human Diaspora and his concern with his own humanity.

Higgins has worked as a New York Times photographer since 1975 and has exhibited in museums throughout the world. His one-man exhibitions have appeared at the International Center of Photography, the Museum of Photographic Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of African Art, the Schomburg Center, the New-York Historical Society and Mus茅e Dapper, a museum of African art in Paris.

Higgins has published several photo collections including Black Woman, Drums of Life: A Photographic Essay on the Black Man in America, Some Time Ago: A Historical Portrait of Black America (1850-1950), Feeling the Spirit: Searching the World for the People of Africa, and Elder Grace: The Nobility of Aging, as well as a memoir, 2004’s Echo of the Spirit: A Photographer’s Journey.

His work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and has been published in numerous compilations and publications such as Newsweek, Fortune, Look, Essence and Life.

Benjamin Mays biographer Randal Maurice Jelks.

Benjamin E. Mays was a civil rights theorist, educator, preacher, Morehouse College president and mentor to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mays was also one of 乐播传媒 College’s most influential graduates, a member of the class of 1920. The college presents award-winning Mays biographer Randal Maurice Jelks, a member of the University of Kansas faculty, in a talk at 7 p.m. Monday, March 25, in the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St.

Sponsored by the college’s Office of Intercultural Education, the lecture is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8376.

Jelks is the author of Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), the first full-length biography of the man King called his “spiritual and intellectual father.”

In recognition of Schoolmaster of the Movement, Jelks recently received the 2013 Literary Award for Nonfiction from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, one of several awards with which the organization salutes excellence in works by African-American authors.

Mays was born in 1894 to sharecroppers in rural South Carolina. His first memory was of a white mob threatening his father. From an early age, Mays was determined both to get the best education and to break the grip of Jim Crow laws on the South.

In 1917, he entered 乐播传媒 as a 23-year-old sophomore after a year at Virginia Union University, where two 乐播传媒 alumni on the faculty encouraged him to try their alma mater. He came to Lewiston not only for a better education than a person of color could reasonably expect down South, but to prove his intellectual equality to whites.

Proof abounded. Mays won a speaking award in his first year at 乐播传媒, finished his senior year as captain of a triumphant debate team and was one of 15 in his class to graduate with honors, among other achievements.

Central to Schoolmaster of the Movement is Jelks’ argument that by connecting the substance of Christianity with the responsibility to challenge injustice, Mays prepared the black church for its central role in the civil rights movement.

And it was at 乐播传媒, Jelks writes, that Mays laid the groundwork for “a new biblical interpretation that could mobilize black communities to take action against Jim Crow’s enforced apathy.” Mays’ studies in religion steered him toward an intellectual structure for both his Baptist faith and his personal mission “to uplift his people,” in Jelks’ words.

Mays and 乐播传媒 had a profound and enduring effect on each other. As Mays famously summed up his experience in Born to Rebel: “乐播传媒 College did not ’emancipate’ me: it did the far greater service of making it possible for me to emancipate myself, to accept with dignity my own worth as a free man.”

Those words are echoed in the college’s mission statement, which begins: “Since 1855, 乐播传媒 College has been dedicated to the emancipating potential of the liberal arts.” Mays exemplifies commitments to social justice, individual worth and access to education that have always been bedrock values for 乐播传媒.

Jelks is an associate professor of American studies at the University of Kansas, with a joint appointment in African and African American studies. He is co-editor of the journal American Studies and a co-founder and editor of the Michigan-based blog , which covers politics, culture and social activism.

He received a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Michigan, a master’s of divinity from McCormick Theological Seminary and a doctorate in comparative black histories from Michigan State University. He is an ordained clergyman in the Presbyterian Church.

Jelks also wrote the award-winning African Americans in the Furniture City: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Grand Rapids (University of Illinois Press, 2006).