As I recall, it was between 7 and 8 p.m. when on the television I heard, “We interrupt this program to bring you a Special Report.”

In the ’60s, these announcements had a much more ominous quality than today’s frequent “Breaking News” alerts. A Special Report truly meant a significant, if not earthshaking, event had occurred. I was watching alone in this moment on April 4, 1968. My parents were away from our home. I sighed and waited for the impending report.

Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot in Memphis, Tenn. There were not many more details aside from that he had succumbed to the bullets.

I was not surprised. As a 12-year-old growing up in the U.S. South, I had seen King’s favor wane among some people from 1966 to 1968. Maybe it was his fair-housing marches in the North. Or maybe it was his position against the Vietnam War, announced in ’67 — a stance attacked by white and black people and the black and white press.

Or perhaps it was the Poor People’s Campaign he had initiated in an effort to critique economic conditions, which were less easy to pinpoint and change than the fight to enter public accommodations or gain voting rights.

James Reese has been a ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ dean since 1977. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

Over the next 50 years, those issues would, fortunately, rise in prominence. But that night, his murder made me wonder whether the dream was deceased or just deflated. In my sadness was a loneliness, an uncertainty about whether our society would drift backward to division and unfairness, or if his campaign’s efforts had enough momentum. Fifty years later, as we talk about that night and the commemoration of Dr. King, I still reflect upon and debate the answer.

That night, when my parents returned, I shared that Dr. King was dead. They looked at me as if, surely, our son would not make this up. I looked at their faces and saw in their expressions, deep and strong, that we all would need to work forward together — which we would do after mourning.

The next days moved quickly: the shock of the event; the fear of racial backlash; the disturbances in many cities; the forlornness of another great man struck down. The funeral saw Benjamin E. Mays, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ Class of 1920 and King’s primary mentor, give the final eulogy.

Martin Luther King Jr. with his mentor, Benjamin Mays ’20, who delivered King’s final eulogy on April 9, 1968, at Morehouse College.

We can see, in the years that followed, society’s response: the impact of the civil disturbances; the increased enrollment of students of color in schools that formerly discouraged it; the expansion and controversy of affirmative action; opportunities and setbacks for people of color; a deserved review of Dr. King’s personal flaws; and an increased understanding of the histories and horizons of many groups of people amid campaigns to slow them.

The last 50 years have led to multiple interpretations of what’s improved or not, and how quickly or slowly.

Demonstrators with signs, one reading “Let his death not be in vain,” march in front of the White House after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, U.S. News & World Report Magazine Collection)

But that night was still.  We went to sleep early, sad — not bewildered, but vastly disappointed. The morning brought more sadness, feelings of defeat, and much thought about how to maintain King’s spirit. These days, the spirit is present in his film clips and in the deep analysis of his ample writings. But we miss much of it and him. Many outcomes — positive and negative — that he identified, warned of, or concluded in his writings are present today.

He did much of his work on civil rights and humanity between the ages 26 and 39. Many forget he died very young. Some have said he was the most important American in the last 100 years. If so, how? And why?

And if not, what does the last half-century say of his impact and of society? The question looms, still, on the anniversary of MLK’s assassination.

Religious studies professor Marcus Bruce ’77 began a recent interview about Benjamin Mays by noting a historic coincidence.

“Since we’re talking about Mays, I’d forgotten how significant this day is,” Bruce said.

The day was Dec. 5, the 61st anniversary of a seminal moment in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement: the start of the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, sparked by Rosa Parks’ arrest and famously led by the young Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

And at a pivotal moment in the boycott, Bruce says, “Mays was instrumental” in bolstering King’s confidence to continue his leadership.

Bruce should know: He’s the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies, and last fall he taught a course on Mays, the 20th-century civil rights leader, theologian, Morehouse College president, mentor to King, and 1920 ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ graduate.

How did Mays influence King during the boycott?

Sixty-one years ago, in the summer of 1956, King had left Montgomery midway through the boycott, first to appear at Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., and then to visit his parents in Atlanta, where he learned that he would be arrested if he returned to Montgomery.

King’s father invited prominent African American leaders, including Mays, to the King home in Atlanta to help his son think through the consequences of staying in Atlanta rather than going back and being arrested.

Many in the group urged King to stay in Atlanta, but King said he would return to Montgomery. Silence followed, and his father burst into tears. At that moment, King later wrote, “I looked at Dr. Mays, one of the great influences in my life. Perhaps he had heard my unspoken plea. At any rate, he was soon defending my position strongly. Then others joined in supporting me.”

At a point critical to not just the boycott but to the movement itself, it was Mays’ voice and support that King felt.

Did you ever meet Mays?

I met Dr. Mays once when I was a student. I was a member of what was called the Afro-American Society at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝. We were having a potluck meal in the bottom of Parker Hall, and he surprised us. He just appeared out of nowhere. I don’t know why he was on campus but he just spent time with us and it was really wonderful.

For a long time, many of us at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ didn’t know much about him other than he was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mentor. In the 1990s, a few of us — the late Bob Branham, Beckie Conrad ’82, and myself — traveled to the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University to look at Mays’ papers for the 1994 Symposium at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ celebrating the centennial of his birth. I began to get a strong sense of Mays’ influence on American religious history and thought during that trip and the conference that followed.

When I look at Mays and think about his relevance or importance, I think it goes back to his phrase that “ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ didn’t emancipate me, but it did me the greater service of helping me to emancipate myself.” That’s what stands out.

For Mays, emancipating himself meant competing with and doing better than white students in his studies and activities. What do you take away from his focus on competition to prove his self-worth?

He wanted to lay to rest any doubts that he, or anyone else for that matter, might have about his intellectual ability. Mays was born and raised in a segregated society where the prevailing idea was that African Americans were intellectually inferior.

He wanted to prove to himself that he could hold his own in any educational context. He thought ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ was a place where he could do that — where he would be accepted but also where he could challenge himself and learn to overcome any anxieties or obstacles that might arise. And he did very well.

Do we know if that was a typical experience of Southern African Americans who went to Northern schools, to frame their goals in competitive terms?

Certainly, it was true of W.E.B. Du Bois, who was born in Great Barrington, Mass., yet earned a degree from Fisk University and then got a second B.A. at Harvard because he wanted to prove himself there — he wanted to see if he could hold his own.

There were a number of African Americans who did this, but quite often the schools they wanted to attend wouldn’t admit them. Individuals like Mays and Du Bois were determined to demonstrate their ability to succeed in any academic environment, again laying to rest for themselves and others the negative stereotypes and myths about the capabilities of African Americans.

Benjamin Mays, Class of 1920, photographed in 1980 when he returned to ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ for his 60th Reunion. Photograph by Jim Daniels.

Mays begins his autobiography, Born to Rebel, at age 4 or 5 by describing his father being harassed by night riders. Instilled at an early age, that fear — of segregation, of the consequences of crossing the color line — was something that Mays fought against until his dying day.

For him, the color line wasn’t simply the cultural, social, or political practices of segregation. They were things that he didn’t want to internalize. He wanted to overcome them.

Since the presidential election, where are your students in their thinking?

They’re thinking about ways to remain engaged in the political process, ways to be heard. I keep holding up Mays as an example. I’ve said that Mays wasn’t able to vote until he was almost 52 years old. And from the moment he set out to get an education, Mays believed education would help liberate him from the fears and the normative ideas or practices around race and segregation.

Mays saw and experienced segregation in one form or another for his entire life. He was still preaching against different kinds of segregation until his dying day. So there’s this whole idea that you don’t give up the fight, that you never give up, that we’re always engaged in this struggle for emancipation.

So education still has the power to liberate students from fear?

That’s why Mays’ words are in our mission statement. We believe that education is emancipating. Mays looked at education as a way to liberate people from ignorance and fear and to help them to envision new possibilities for themselves and for society.

He said that he believed that everyone had something to give to humanity. And if they didn’t do the work that they were capable of, then that work wouldn’t get done.

That connects to Mays’ eulogy for King, when he said that there’s no such thing as someone, like King, being “ahead of their time” because the time is “always ripe to do that which is right and that which needs to be done.”

We’re reading the eulogy now. I always think that’s so powerful, that he was able to say that, to have this vision of King as being “of his time” and speaking to his time in a very specific way. King seemed to view his life in the same way. He really does talk about being in this place at this moment.

Mays delivers the final eulogy for the slain Martin Luther King Jr. on April 9, 1968, at Morehouse College. Photograph courtesy of Howard University.

King also gives you a sense of his journey. At the time of the boycott, he talks about how his journey connected with the local leadership and action, with the discontent among people experiencing the injustices of segregation. And how there was power in one small, seemingly insignificant gesture by Rosa Parks of just sitting down — it wasn’t the first time — and how her being arrested connected with people and ignited something. All of this played a part in the emergence and organization of the Civil Rights movement.

To stay engaged in the process — that’s the challenge!

I think something like that is happening right now. People are being challenged to think: What does it mean to be an American citizen? What does it mean to be free? What involvement and what place do I have in the political process?

Your candidate may not have won but does that mean that you walk away from the process and leave the responsibility to someone else? Or is there work you can continue to do to promote your idea of what it means to be free or an American? To stay engaged in the process — that’s the challenge!

Free Will Baptists founded ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝. Is there something about how they interpreted their gospel and teachings that resembles what Mays and King were doing?

The Free Will Baptists’ social and political commitments — abolitionism, temperance, education — came from their religious convictions. They believed that it was their responsibility, their duty, to transform the world around them and to look at the Sermon on the Mount as their practical way: that you feed the hungry, you clothe the naked, you visit those who are in prison, and you take care of the homeless.

Mays, like King, believed and practiced a “social gospel” that applied to every aspect of individual’s life and involvement with others. If the gospel only meant something on Sunday mornings or in your private meditations, then that wasn’t really the gospel message. For Mays and Dr. King, the gospel had a social message, one of social reform, social change, and realizing the Kingdom of God in the world.

What should we know about Mays’ meeting with Mahatma Gandhi?

It shows that he was part of a small group of African American scholars and intellectuals who were looking at India’s struggle against imperialism and colonialism as a way to help their own strategies for addressing segregation in the U.S.

Mays engaged Gandhi around the whole question of nonviolent resistance. And when you see that happening in 1936, you see that he is thinking, “How can I use this same strategy, this same approach, in the U.S.?”

It also shows how he was becoming an international figure, too.

Was Mays ever criticized?

Sometimes people wonder just how involved he was in the civil rights movement. Well, he was very involved, educating the next generation of leaders, working behind the scenes, donating money, supporting the leadership and individuals within the movement, especially Dr. King and some others.

The only criticism that I do know of came later in the 1960s with a whole new generation of political activists. These were enormously important years in the consciousness of African Americans: black pride, Black Power, and a new kind of militant activism were emerging.

“Initially, my students just see Mays as someone ‘out there,'” says Marcus Bruce ’77, the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies. By the end of the course, they’ve begun to appreciate “the trials, tribulations, abuses he had to suffer.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

Mays very firmly believed in the possibility of African Americans, but he wanted to go the route of education and help African Americans gain leadership positions in every field. Mays was seen by some younger activists as “old school” and out of step in this regard — as, on occasion, was King.

Recently I visited Paris and saw an exhibit called The Color Line at the Quai Branly Museum that looks at African American experience, from slavery to the Black Lives Matter movement, through the lens of art. When I came to the section on the 1960s, there were pictures of the Black Panthers, Angela Davis, and, in one glass case, Mays’ book Born to Rebel.

It struck me: Do they know the extent, intensity, and complexity of the differences and visions that existed between Mays’ and a new generation of African American activists? What we now celebrate as a period of rich diversity of ideas among African Americans was a painful and difficult period in Civil Rights history.

I have seen an interview with Mays where he talks about seeing the pro-KKK film Birth of a Nation in Lewiston, and afterward running back to campus because he feared for his safety.

He said it was the only time when he felt in danger in Lewiston. He felt real hostility and anger in that audience, and it frightened him. He saw the power of the medium to frighten people and generate mindless aggression and anger toward someone like him.

While he didn’t write specifically about Birth of a Nation, he wrote about another film, The Green Pastures, a popular Broadway musical in 1930 with an all-black cast that became a film with an all-black cast in 1936.

The movie depicts Bible stories through stereotypes of African Americans. It portrays God as a black man, “De Lawd,” speaking a black dialect — not correct or proper English speech — and scenarios that painted a quaint, folksy, stereotypically exaggerated image of African Americans and religious belief. Heaven is described as a fish fry.

Mays begins the book that is his dissertation, The Negro’s God: As Reflected in His Literature, by talking about The Green Pastures because he was bothered by the stereotypical depiction of how African Americans viewed God. He wanted his book to be a work of scholarship that recovered the richness and diversity of conceptions of African American ideas about God in their literature, in their scholarship, in their poetry.

Are there parts of Mays’ experience that don’t resonate with your students?

Many of my students raise questions about Mays’ particular attention to the role of race and gender in the education of young black men, especially the idea of Mays, when he was president of Morehouse, emphasizing the masculinity of young Morehouse men and their graduates.

I tell them that Mays taught the young African American men of Morehouse the “lessons” he had learned in his life and career, lessons in “how to be free in a segregated world,” how to define themselves by their “own terms in a world that offered no terms for their existence.”

Anna Marr ’17, an environmental studies major from Larchmont, N.Y., makes a point on Dec. 8 during the Benjamin Mays course taught by Marcus Bruce ’77, the Benjamin E. Mays Professor of Religious Studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

Initially, my students just see Mays as a prominent and successful African American who attended ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝. They’ve heard references to him at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ but they don’t know him. By the end of the course, they’ve become more intimate with him and begun to appreciate the decisions and choices and the life he led, and the trials, tribulations, and abuses he had to suffer.

And they begin to understand why he designed the Morehouse educational experience in a particular way, always exhorting students to do their best, to be competitive, and to believe they were just as talented and deserving as everyone else in the world.

At weekly chapel gatherings, Mays would give Morehouse students a phrase or saying that they could hang on to — quotes that they would keep for the remainder of their lives, that would serve as principles that would guide them in any situation.

I tell my students about this practice and then ask them, “What guides you, what are your principles?” And I always emphasize that Mays is a fellow ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College graduate. I say, “You can do as much, if not more, as Mays, a ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ graduate. What are you learning from your education? What are you taking away from your experience at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ that will allow you to navigate the world and guide you through the rest of the world?”

What is another aspect of Mays that they might struggle with?

Sometimes Mays’ competitiveness, as you’ve described it, and his emphasis on always listing what he had achieved, is a bit off-putting to them. I had to learn to appreciate it myself. I thought, “Why does he keep listing this, that, and the other thing?” But I learned that it was a way for him to chart his course, assess his progress and to push himself to do even more.

Ben Coulibay ’17, a philosophy major from Philadelphia, joins the discussion on Dec. 8 during the Benjamin Mays course taught by Marcus Bruce ’77, the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

The point is, he was always trying to see how far he had come and what he achieved. It wasn’t simply his ego. It was about, “How free am I? What have I done to improve the community, the nation and the world of which I am a part?” He did that by listing his accomplishments or what he had been able to achieve at Howard and Morehouse and throughout the course of his life and career.

So long before anybody appreciated him, Benjamin Mays appreciated himself.

This is a man who was the son of former slaves, and he wanted to remind people of the fact that he got a degree from ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College, that he had earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and that he was dean of the School of Religion at Howard University and president of Morehouse College for 27 years. He had come a long way and achieved a great deal!

So long before anybody appreciated him, Benjamin Mays appreciated himself. That is kind of amazing.

What’s the one thing we should know about Benjamin Mays?

He was a greater man and a greater individual than we know. He had a far greater and wider impact than we actually know.

Besides appreciating him as a writer — he wrote a weekly column for The Pittsburgh Courier, an influential African American newspaper, for years — and as a scholar, as someone involved in the Civil Rights movement, and as a mentor for King, he was also an international figure, too. This is a man who was part of YMCA International and the World Council of Churches. He met and worked with hundreds of leaders around the world and had leadership positions with various national and international organizations.

The other thing that strikes me is his ongoing struggle for emancipation. I started out with the phrase — “ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ didn’t emancipate me” — and then you look at what he meant by “emancipation,” and it’s ongoing.

When we think of “emancipation,” is it usually some 19th-century idea and event, the Emancipation Proclamation and a group of African Americans, some formerly enslaved, some free, who are struggling to define freedom for themselves and the country? No! The greatness of this country is that we keep defining “emancipation.”

The phrase that rings with me is Lincoln’s from the Gettysburg’s Address: “This nation shall have a new birth of freedom.” We tend to think that freedom was born a long time ago and it’s done. No! The process of defining freedom goes on.

Each ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ student — all of us here — is a new birth of freedom. Now are we going to articulate that? How are we going to do that? It’s not easy. It’s painful because somebody over there might think, “That’s a ridiculous idea.”

But that is part of the process. So that is what strikes me this year, that Mays represents a new birth of freedom and encourages all of us to work through our ideas and our practice of freedom.

Corrections to this story were published at 6 p.m. Jan. 6, 2017.

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 ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ 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 ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝, 75 Russell St.

Associate Professor of Psychology Michael Sargent. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

The panel discussion by ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ faculty, staff and students will immediately follow the first March 1 screening, also in Olin 104.

Sponsored by the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ 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 ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ panelists are:
•    Marcus Bruce, Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies;
•    Stephen Engel, assistant professor of politics;
•    Hilmar Jensen, associate professor of history;
•    Gwen Lexow, associate athletic director and Title IX officer;
•    Joshua Manson, a ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ senior from Hastings-On-Hudson, New York;
•    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 ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝. Sargent organized the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ 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 ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ 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 ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ 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.”

Not the viewbook ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ where faculty and students scale ever-higher peaks of achievement. Instead, a more prosaic place where, in back offices, kitchens, and workshops, College staffers make the academic fireworks possible.

And it’s a place whose achievements, perhaps, reflect what Benjamin Mays ’20 had in mind when he exhorted mourners at King’s funeral to make the civil rights leader’s unfinished work “truly our own.”

President Hansen considers a comment during the King Day workshop on diversity efforts in the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ workplace. At right is Ellen Peters ’87, director of the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

President Elaine Tuttle Hansen convened “Institutionalizing Unfinished Work” to illuminate those achievements. As ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ has striven to make the campus more diverse and inclusive, Hansen explained, she has been struck by the intensity College staffers have brought to that effort. For the MLK Day workshop, she asked seven College administrators to share challenges and revelations they’ve encountered along the way.

The King holiday, Hansen said later, afforded a plum opportunity “to explore all the places on campus where people really are trying to do the unfinished work of social justice and inclusion.”

We heard from Carmita McCoy, who is helping ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ develop a concept from the Benjamin Mays Initiative: “swing deans” who help recruit a new class for Admissions one year, then spend the next year as a dean of students mentoring that same class, especially members of underrepresented groups.

Something she hadn’t expected, she explained, was the concern some African American parents expressed that their children wouldn’t be able to maintain their faith practices at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝.

Bob Pallone, who works in Advancement, wondered how to convince alums of color that today’s ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ is more welcoming than the one they knew. “How do we understand what they experienced?” he asked. “And how do we convey what’s happening now?”

The diversity of diversities resonated throughout the workshop. In realigning staff assignments for the new dining Commons, said Dining Services head Christine Schwartz, she has encouraged her people to try out for jobs they really want.

Implementing this enlightened policy, though, sometimes brought Schwartz up against the effects of old, harsh inequalities — such as a worker who had gone through public school labeled as a special-ed student on the basis of a single, specific disability.

The diversity of diversities includes job classification. As Carmen Purdy, a presenter and the coordinator of the affirmative action office, pointed out, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ staff feel empowered simply to be heard.

The convener agreed. “I talk about ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ all the time, and I rarely have an opportunity to talk publicly about people who are behind the scenes,” Hansen said afterward. “Quite invisible but so important to the college, just kind of making everything else happen.”

Including, now more than ever, some unfinished work that just can’t wait.

Morris Dees

Weaving stories from the Bible, from the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and from his own biography, Southern Poverty Law Center co-founder Morris Dees presents a compelling, sometimes emotional address at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College on May 8 as the Presidential Symposium keynote speaker. From MPBN’s Speaking in Maine. (Total time: 1:07:42) [More…]

Amy Keith, a native of Concord, Mass., and an Oberlin College graduate, is working on both campuses through the Maine Campus Compact to develop sustainable programs that create better connections between the college and the community.

At both ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ and LAC, Keith provides training and education to students about the “America Reads” initiative. As part of her work with “America Reads” and “America Counts,” Keith coordinates work-study and volunteer tutors in the Lewiston elementary schools. She also has been meeting with public school teachers to establish good working relationships and coordinate communication between the tutors and teachers.

Keith is also working with faculty and students at both institutions on service-learning projects, such as the Martin Luther King Jr. “read-in.” At LAC, Keith will be working to integrate more fully service-learning into the college community by creating a centralized catalog of available or completed projects, providing faculty and students with access to information about various community projects and collaborations. Keith hopes this will increase the LAC service-learning network. At ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝, Keith provides support for ongoing service-learning projects that the college sponsors in the community.

Americorps is a national service program that provides thousands of Americans of all ages and backgrounds with educational awards in exchange for a year or two of community service. AmeriCorps*VISTA members have served in disadvantaged communities for more than 30 years. Members work full-time and live in the communities they serve, creating sustainable programs that can continue after they complete their service. There are currently more than 45,000 AmeriCorps members doing community service across the country.

Awarded at the 17th annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast celebration in Portland last month, the award cites ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝’s commitment to and leadership in “providing professional employment and access to education for people of color.”

In recognition of the college’s achievements, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People praised the college’s recruitment of faculty, staff and students of color, as well as hosting prominent speakers of color on campus. “ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ has several African-American chairs of departments and dean of students which means that African- Americans are visible in the administrative ranks of the college,” the award citation read.

Joanna E. Lee, director of affirmative action at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝, accepted the award on behalf of the college.

The talk by theologian, teacher and author Vincent Harding, Martin Luther King and the Future of America, will be presented in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives. The public is invited to attend at no charge.

Harding’s books include his best-known work, There is a River, and his most recent, Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero. Focusing on the end of King’s life, the essays in the book reflect on how Americans might take the civil rights leader’s final years as a challenge and a resource for the nation’s future.

Harding was senior academic adviser for the acclaimed public-television series Eyes on the Prize. Currently he is professor of religion and social transformation at the Iliff School of Theology at the University of Denver.

Previously he was chair of the history and sociology department at Spelman College in Atlanta. He served from 1969 to 1974 as the first director of the Atlanta-based Institute of the Black World.

A native of New York City, he earned his master’s degree and doctorate at the University of Chicago.

The Zerby Lecture is a memorial to Rayborn L. Zerby of Lewiston, who contributed to the growth of ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ through years of service as professor of religion and dean of the faculty before retiring in 1962. He died in 1987 at the age of 95.

Each year, the program brings leading commentators on contemporary religious thought to campus. Previous Zerby lecturers have included Holocaust chronicler Elie Wiesel and the Rev. Peter Gomes, a ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ alumnus and minister of Memorial Church at Harvard University.