Newsroom

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Martin Luther King III, the oldest son of America's best-known and most beloved civil rights leaders, will speak on his father's work and how it influences his own activism today on Tuesday, April 11, starting at 6 p.m. at Oregon State University's LaSells Stewart Center.

"My Father's Dream, My Mission" is the title of King's talk, a reflection on both the civil rights movement and his father's legacy. King will examine America's progress since his father's legendary "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered at the 1963 March on Washington, and look at ongoing efforts to secure equality and combat discrimination.

President and CEO of the King Center in Atlanta, King espouses values made famous by both his father and his mother, the recently deceased Coretta Scott King: nonviolent strategies and actions aimed at ridding the world of social, political and economic injustice. He has led protests against the "digital divide in the field of technology," has spoken to the United Nations on behalf of individuals living with AIDS and has confronted racial profiling by conducting hearings that led to the passage of anti-racial profiling resolutions.

Born in 1957 in Montgomery, Alabama, he is the second oldest of the four King children and is a graduate of Atlanta's Morehouse College, where he earned a bachelor's degree in political science. He is well known in Georgia for helping to achieve a compromise between Georgia legislators and civic leaders to change the state flag - up until then, an offensive and divisive symbol for many Georgians. He also served from 1987-1993 as an elected commissioner of Fulton County.

In the 1980s, he was jailed for protesting against apartheid and other racial injustice in South Africa and in support of freedom for Nelson Mandela, who would later become president of South Africa. In the 1990s, he spoke out often on racial inequity and justice issues in Haiti, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

Tickets for the event are free, but required, and are available now at the OSU Memorial Union, Room 103. For ticket information, call 541-737-6872.