For More Information, Contact:

Sericia Cole

PSC - Office of Public Relations

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 21, 2007

PSC ANNOUNCES 2007-08 ‘BLESS THE MIC’ LECTURE SERIES

(Little Rock, Ark.) --- Philander Smith College has released the 2007-2008 schedule of its Bless The Mic: A Hip-Hop President’s Lecture Series, set to kick off at 7 p.m. Tuesday, September 18 in the M.L. Harris Auditorium when civil rights icon Andrew Young of Atlanta, Ga., is presented by The Coca-Cola Foundation.

In 1964 the New Orleans-bred Young was named executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, becoming a principal lieutenant of Martin Luther King Jr. Eight years later, he would begin the first of three terms as a U.S. Congressman from Georgia. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter appointed Young the country’s first African American ambassador to the United Nations; and from 1982 to 1989 he served as mayor of Atlanta, presiding over a period of economic prosperity and growth for that city. A graduate of Howard University and Hartford Theological Seminary, the ordained United Church of Christ minister is currently chairman of Atlanta-based GoodWorks International, a specialty consulting group that provides strategic services to corporations and governments operating in the global economy.

Senior correspondent for National Public Radio Juan Williams will appear at 7 p.m. Thursday, October 11 in the M.L. Harris Auditorium, presented by The Darragh Foundation. Williams is also a political analyst for Fox Television and a regular panelist for FoxNews Sunday. In addition to prize-winning columns and editorial writing for The Washington Post, he has also authored six books including his latest, Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America- and What We Can Do About It, which has ignited national debate on his cutting analysis of Black leadership in this country.

At 7 p.m. Wednesday, November 7 Free, the former co-host of BET’s 106 & Park, will lecture in the M.L. Harris Auditorium. After five years on BET’s highly rated video countdown show, which rivals only MTV’s TRL in ratings and pop-culture significance, Free (born Marie Wright) and her co-host stepped down to pursue other ventures in the entertainment industry. These days the Boston native is pursuing a career as a solo artist and is in the studio working on her debut album.

Well-known civil rights activist and minister Rev. Al Sharpton will join the lineup at 7 p.m. Thursday, January 17, 2008 in the M.L. Harris Auditorium. Sharpton’s social activism began early; by age 10 he was a fully ordained Pentecostal minister. In 1969 he was appointed by Jesse Jackson as youth director of Operation Breadbasket, a group that focused on the promotion of new and better jobs for African Americans; in 1971 the Brooklyn born Sharpton went on to found the National Youth Movement to raise resources for impoverished youth. Today the 2004 candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election is founder and president of the New York-based National Action Network, an organization that fights for progressive, people-based social policies. For more than two decades Sharpton has been one of America's foremost and outspoken leaders for civil rights, community empowerment and equality.

On Monday, February 4 at 7 p.m., Judge Glenda Hatchett will speak in the M.L. Harris Auditorium. Known in legal circles for her innovative courtroom style, and widely respected by viewers for her revolutionary interventions on her TV program, The Judge Hatchett Show, her extensive work with youth has established her as a leader in the justice system nationwide. In 1990, she helped found the Truancy Intervention Project, which enlists the help of legal volunteers to provide early, positive intervention with children reported as truants. She also serves as national spokesperson for CASA or Court Appointed Special Advocates. Additionally, the mother of two boys is the author of Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say, released in 2003.

In the Harry R. Kendall Center at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 26, feminist writer and researcher Tracy Sharpley-Whiting will lecture. A graduate of Brown University, Sharpley-Whiting is Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies and French at Vanderbilt University where she also directs the program in African American and Diaspora Studies and serves as director of the W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies. She is the author of four books, including Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip Hop's Hold on Young Black Women, a provocative exploration of the collision of hip-hop and feminism, released in April 2007.

Bless The Mic, a contemporary spin on the traditional college lecture series, provides a broad mix of speakers who possess the ability to communicate with the hip-hop generation (broadly defined as Black youth culture including college students and young professionals, but today includes a more diverse group of young people), or who have studied areas that are of importance to this demographic.

Since its inception in 2005 the popular lecture series—which last year drew an average of 400 attendees—has featured notable cultural and political figures such as Michael Eric Dyson, Ann Coulter, Cornel West, Jonathan Kozol and Ward Connerly.

All lectures in the series are free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Sericia Cole at (501) 370-5279 or by e-mail at scole@philander.edu.

Founded in 1877, Philander Smith College is one of the oldest private, historically Black institutions of higher learning in Arkansas. The four-year liberal arts college is affiliated with the United Methodist Church and the United Negro College Fund.

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