Capital University’s 16th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Learning To Feature Scholar-Activist Carlos Muñoz Jr. Jan. 15
Capital University will present its 16th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Learning on Monday, Jan. 15.
The daylong event will begin at 8:15 a.m. with a community gathering in Stegemoeller Room, followed at 8:45 a.m. by a procession through campus to Mees Hall for convocation, which will begin at 9 a.m. The keynote speaker for this year’s celebration of King’s life and legacy is Carlos Muñoz Jr., who will speak on “The Challenge for Multiracial Democracy in America.”
Following convocation, a series of workshops and community discussions will be held across campus from 10:30 a.m. to noon. Capital faculty members and special guests will host the following discussions:
• Genes and the Floating Meaning of Race
• Latinos, Hispanics and New Latino Immigrants: A conversation on the Largest Minority Group in the U.S.
• Marriage, Civil Unions and State Amendments
• HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa
• Speaking Truth to Power, a workshop on King’s prophetic ministry to the nation
• The “N” Word and other Troublesome Labels
• Issues in the Somali Community
• The Beloved Community, an interactive workshop demonstrating the challenges different groups of people face in building the basic elements of community
• Hurricane Katrina: Rebuilding the “Beloved Community,” a discussion using clips from the Spike Lee documentary, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Parts” to consider what has happened to the residents who fled their home and what is the future for New Orleans
• Healing the Village
Ongoing events will run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in various locations on campus. They include children’s activities, The Schumacher Gallery’s feature of select works from the Schreiber-Fox Collection of African Art, community engagement opportunities, and “Remembering Papa Dallas,” actress Tonea Stewart’s dramatic retelling of a conversation with her Papa Dallas, a former slave brutally scarred by a cruel overseer who punished him for learning to read.
A special jazz luncheon featuring Bob Breithaupt, Bobby Floyd, Byron Stripling and Gene Walker will be held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Capital Court. Tickets are $11 for those not on a meal plan and $5 for children under 12. Tickets will be on sale in the post office lobby of the campus center. All other events are free and open to the public. For the complete schedule of events, including time, location and facilitator information, please visit www.capital.edu/MLK-day/.
About Dr. Carlos Muñoz Jr.
Carlos Muñoz is a pioneer in the creation of undergraduate and graduate curricula in the discipline of ethnic studies and a widely known expert on the issues of ethnic and racial politics; multiculturalism and diversity; immigration; civil and human rights; and affirmative action.
Muñoz was the founding chair of the first Chicano studies department in the nation at California State University at Los Angeles in 1968 and the founding chair of the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies. He is the author of numerous pioneering works on the Mexican-American political experience and on African American and Latino political coalitions. His book, “Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement,” won the Gustavus Myers Book Award for outstanding scholarship in the study of human rights in the United States. It was a major resource for the PBS television series “Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement,” for which Muñoz served as senior consultant and was featured in the series. He currently is working on several new books: “Diversity and The Challenge for a Multiracial Democracy In America”; a biographical novel on “The Life and Times of Dr. Ernesto Galarza” (the first Mexican American nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature); “The Latino Experience in Major League Baseball”; and his autobiography “Victory is in the Struggle.”
Muñoz has appeared as an expert on PBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and the Spanish-speaking UNIVISION and Telemundo. He is a syndicated columnist with the Progressive Media Project. His newspaper columns are distributed nationally by the Knight-Ridder news wire service and have appeared online on Latino.com and on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service (Europe and Latin America).
As a scholar-activist, Muñoz has been a central figure in the struggles for civil and human rights, social justice, and peace in the United States and abroad since he was a student activist in the 1960s. He played a prominent leadership role as a founder of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. Since then he has served as a leading organizer of various multiracial coalitions, including the Faculty for Human Rights in Central America, Faculty Against Apartheid in South Africa, and The Rainbow Coalition. In 1988, he was a key adviser to the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign. He served on the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and is a co-founder of the Institute for Multiracial Justice in San Francisco. He also co-founded Latinos Unidos, a grass-roots community organization in Berkeley, Calif. Muñoz is a Vietnam-era veteran and a member of the Veterans for Peace. He is active in the Counter-Military Recruitment in the Public Schools Movement as well as in the larger Anti-Iraq War Movement.
Currently, Muñoz is one of 28 individuals honored in The Long Walk to Freedom, a traveling national exhibition tour that focuses on civil rights activists who accomplished extraordinary deeds that changed the face of the nation and gave birth to the Modern Civil Rights Movement. Organized by Community Works and funded by The National Endowment for the Arts, The California Arts Council, and the Friends and Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library, the exhibit includes video, historical and contemporary photographs, and a graphic timeline developed by the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture.