The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture will present their seventh annual MLK Symposium this evening at the Winspear Opera House with a conversation focusing on the cultural conditions that led to the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. “The World Dr. King Inherited and Changed,” as the program is titled, will feature keynote speaker Isabel Wilkerson, the first African American woman Pulitzer Prize-winner.
Wilkerson is the author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, the culmination of more than 15 years of research into the movement of African Americans from the south to urban centers between 1915 and 1970. In addition to telling a general history of the migration, the book focuses on three individuals, each story representative of the trends that led African Americans to places like New York, Los Angeles, and Florida.
Wilkerson will also be joined at this evening’s symposium by two panelists, each of whom also have personal histories rooted in the “great migration.” Dr. Carol François, a longtime Dallas resident who grew up in Pennsylvania, has served as a teacher, principal, Dean of Instruction, Chief of Staff of Dallas ISD, and Associate Commissioner of Education for the State of Texas. Dr. Robert Green is the former Dean at Michigan State University who worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. His father migrated to Detroit.
The program will begin with a keynote address by Wilkerson, followed by an interview and discussion. For more information, visit here.
