Adams State University invited Charles E. "Charlie" Cobb, Jr. to campus in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Week. Cobb worked for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as Field Secretary in the Mississippi Delta during the Freedom Summer of 1964. His keynote address, Changing America: From
Martin Luther King to Mississippi, begins at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 21, in Carson Auditorium, located in the Student Union Building.
Prior to the lecture, Cobb will sign copies of his book, This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible, starting at 6 p.m. in the Carson Auditorium foyer.
Cobb, a journalist, professor, and former activist with the SNCC, worked with Bob Moses, to organize Freedom Summer in 1964. In the 70s and 80s, Cobb worked as a journalist and became the first African American staff writer for National Geographic. Currently he is a senior analyst at allAfrica.com and a visiting professor at Brown University. Since 2014 Charlie has been a Visiting Activist Scholar at Duke, serving on the Editorial Board of One Person, One Vote: The Legacy of SNCC and the Fight for Voting Rights.
Dr. Ed Crowther, ASU professor of history, will also present a lecture, Whitening the Civil Rights Movement: Conservatism, the Religious Right and the Politics of Memory, at noon on Wednesday, Jan. 20, in Porter Hall room 130.
Both events are free and open to the public. For more information call 719-587-7771.
