Posted: Monday, January 6, 2014

The University of Evansville will celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, January 20 with a daylong series of events, including a re-enactment of the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C., the William G. and Rose M. Mays Martin Luther King Jr. Lectureship, and an interactive touchscreen kiosk about race and diversity.

The day’s schedule of events is as follows. All events are free and open to the public.

1:30 p.m.: Rally and march, leaves from the Bernhardt Atrium, Schroeder School of Business Building. This year marks the University of Evansville’s 26th annual re-enactment of the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington. Following a rally at 1:30, the march will begin at 2 p.m. The route will cut through the middle of campus then follow Walnut Street, Alvord Boulevard, and Lincoln Avenue back to campus.
 
3 p.m.: The march will end in the Ridgway University Center lobby, where Mayor Lloyd Winnecke will read a Martin Luther King Jr. Day proclamation, and the Race Experience kiosk will open to the campus community. This interactive touchscreen travels around the nation to allow participants to see what they would look like transformed into another race. The kiosk illustrates the advances in genetics, history, and anthropology that have shown that race is a social construct. The Race Experience kiosk will remain in the Ridgway University Center lobby until 4 p.m. Friday, January 24.

7 p.m.: William G. and Rose M. Mays Martin Luther King Jr. Lectureship, Eykamp Hall (Room 251), Ridgway University Center. Through the generosity of William G. and Rose M. Mays, this lectureship funds the annual keynote speaker during the University of Evansville’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration.

This year’s lecture features Daryl Davis, an award-winning pianist and author of Klan-Destine Relationships: A Black Man’s Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan, who will discuss his extraordinary journey into the heart of one of America’s most fanatical institutions.

Driven by the need to understand those who, without ever having met him, would hate him because of the color of his skin, Davis decided to seek out the roots of racism, meeting with Roger Kelly, Imperial Wizard of the Invincible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and other Klan members. His mesmerizing story, told in gritty words and startling photographs, is both harrowing and awe-inspiring.

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