Clayborne Carson, renowned expert on Martin Luther King, Jr., will present “Martin’s Dream: My Journey and the Journey of Martin Luther King, Jr.” on Thursday, March 3, at 7:30 p.m. in the Austin Reading Room of the Jereld R. Nicholson Library at Linfield College.
The talk is part of a traveling exhibition, “Changing America: The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863 and the March on Washington, 1963,” which will run Feb. 10 through March 25 at Linfield.
Carson, the Stanford University centennial professor of history and Ronnie Lott founding director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, has devoted his professional life to the study of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the movements King inspired. During Carson’s undergraduate years at UCLA, he participated in civil rights and antiwar protests, and many of his subsequent writings reflect his experiences by stressing the importance of grassroots political activity within the African-American freedom struggle.
In 1985, the late Coretta Scott King invited Carson to direct a long-term project to edit and publish King’s speeches, sermons, correspondence, publications and unpublished writing. Under Carson’s direction, the King Papers Project has produced seven volumes of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. In 2005, Carson founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute to endow and expand the work of the King Papers Project.
The traveling exhibition is presented by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of American History in collaboration with the American Library Association Public Programs Office. The exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The lecture and exhibit are free and open to the public. They are sponsored by the Linfield Department of Political Science, The Frederick Douglass Forum on Law, Rights, and Justice, the Elliot Alexander Fund for Political Science, the Dean’s Speaker Fund and the Linfield Nicholson Library. For more information, contact Susan Barnes Whyte, college librarian, at swhyte@linfield.edu or 503-883-2517.
