February 19 ,
2008
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY TO FEATURE ADMIRED
CIVIL
RIGHTS LEADER AT BLACK HISTORY MONTH PROGRAM
LINCOLN
UNIVERSITY, PA ~ Jesse Epps, an advisor to slain civil rights
leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., will speak at Lincoln University
on Thursday, February 21 at 4 p.m. in the Mary Dod Brown
Memorial Chapel, a program in celebration of Black History
Month.
The English and
Mass Communications Department in the School of Humanities
and Graduate Studies is sponsoring Mr. Epps’s
appearance at the university.
Epps has been an erstwhile participant in the struggle for
civil rights. He is credited with inviting Dr. King to Memphis,
Tenn. to help organize the striking sanitation workers, but
he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Epps received training in labor relations at Syracuse, Rutgers
and Cornell universities and has spent the last 40 years
fighting for and defending the rights and conditions of all
working men and women.
He began his professional labor experience working for the
International Union of Electrical Workers at Local 320 in
Syracuse, N.Y., where he served as chief steward and was
an executive board member of the education and civil rights
committees.
Born in Dublin,
Miss., a farming community during the height of the depression
and segregation, Epps served as the assistant to the International
President of the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees from 1960-1972. In that capacity he
assisted in the oversight and direction of an international
field staff of officers and volunteers and directed field
operations in several states, including Georgia, Maryland,
Ohio, Tennessee, Florida and Louisiana. He
also directed a statewide operation in New York.
Epps advised President Lyndon B. Johnson on matters relating
to the participation of youth, students and minorities in
the Democratic Party and in government.
The event is free
and open to the public. For
more information, call 484-365-8094.
Founded in 1854, Lincoln
University is a premier, historically Black University that
combines the best elements of a liberal arts and sciences-based
undergraduate core curriculum and selected graduate programs
to meet the needs of those living in a highly technological
and global society. The University is nationally
recognized as a major producer of African Americans with undergraduate
degrees in the physical sciences (biology, chemistry and physics);
computer and informational sciences; biological and life sciences. Lincoln
has an enrollment of 2,423 undergraduate and graduate students.
Lincoln
University of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
1570 Baltimore Pike, P.O. Box 179, Lincoln University, PA 19352 \
(484) 365-8000
