Civil rights leader to talk today
Colia Clark, a colleague of Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers, is scheduled to speak at the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center.
Published Feb. 7, 2006
Colia Clark, civil rights veteran and former colleague of Martin Luther King Jr., is scheduled to speak at 7 p.m. tonight at the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center.
Clark, who is visiting MU as part of a series of lectures during Black History Month, will deliver a lecture titled "Africana Peoples, People of Color and Workers: The United Front." The black studies department is sponsoring the speech.
Clark said her lecture will focus on civil injustices from around the world and will emphasize her efforts to consolidate workers' unions in countries including France, Brazil, South Africa and El Salvador.
She said she also would discuss the effects of AIDS and foreign debt on African nations.
"Africa's voice is not heard by the world media," Clark said.
She said the African countries are too far in debt to save themselves from the costs of the epidemic.
Clark worked with several prominent rights organizations, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She was a special assistant to Medgar Evers, and she worked alongside King in SNCC.
Clark also worked closely in the civil rights movement with Coretta Scott King.
"I knew her very well," Clark said. "I think she deserves a real story. She was the first in that family to come into the peace movement."
Clark completed her master's degree at Albany State University in Georgia and was the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Youth Council in North Jackson, Miss.
Clark said she became active in the civil rights movement after several children were lynched in Mississippi when she was a teenager.
"I turned 15 the year Emmett Till was murdered," Clark said.
She said the event caused her to dedicate her life to civil rights advocacy.
Clark said she also plans to talk about the power of women in the global work force. "Talking with women from Lebanon and Afghanistan, I was struck by this feminism," she said.
Travis Gregory, vice president of the Legion of Black Collegians, said he would attend the speech and that he had heard several LBC members speak highly of Clark's work.
Clark's lecture is the second in a series of speeches and discussions scheduled as part of Black History Month.
The next event is a discussion about the importance of historically black fraternities and sororities scheduled for 4 p.m. Feb. 16 at the Black Culture Center.