Tonight at Hoole: The Gladney Lecture for Justice and Social Change with the Rev. Dr. Dorsey Odell Blake

Please join at the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, 2nd Floor Mary Harmon Bryant Hall at 7:30 this evening, Wednesday, April 2nd for the 2008 The Rose Gladney Lecture for Justice and Social Change with Rev. Dr. Dorsey Odell Blake.

Rev. Dr. Blake's lecture is entitled "40 Years after King: Wilderness or Promised Land".



A copy of the flier for download is available here:
http://www.lib.ua.edu/events/documents/blake_flier_final.pdf

Rev. Blake was the first head of the African American Studies Program at the University of Alabama, and was the first full-time African-American Male faculty member (1972-1977 at UA). Dr. Dorsey Odell Blake is the Presiding Minister of The Church for The Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, CA. Founded in 1944 during a time of local, national, and global tension and conflict, The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples is the nation's first interracial, interfaith congregation. Its mission, as articulated by co-founding pastors, Dr. Howard Thurman and Dr. Alfred Fisk, and visionary members, was to create a religious fellowship that transcended artificial barriers of race, nation, culture, gender, and social distinctions.

In establishing the context for the lecture series, Rose Gladney has written: "This great experiment in democratic governance which we call America draws strength from multiple human struggles to create not only a more physically comfortable life, but also a just and equitable society. I am fortunate to have grown into adulthood in the midst of the 20th century's greatest examples of such struggle: the African-American liberation movement, the women's liberation movement, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender liberation movements—all symbols and symptoms of the larger human struggle for justice and social change." Dr. Rose Gladney is a retired UA Professor of American Studies. The Rose Gladney Lecture for Justice and Social Change was endowed in her honor.

The Gladney Lecture is co-sponsored by UA Libraries, American Studies, Honor's College, New College, Religious Studies, Women's Studies, African American Studies Program, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Diversity Committee of the College of Arts and Sciences.