Keynote speaker for MLK announced

Longtime civil rights advocate and attorney Michelle Alexander will be the keynote speaker during Grand Valley’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration in January.

Alexander will give two presentations on campus: Wednesday, January 18, at 5 p.m. on the Allendale Campus; and Thursday, January 19, 10 a.m. in the Cook-DeWitt Center. Both presentations are free and open to the public.

Alexander is the author of The New Jim Crow, a critique in which Alexander argues that racial caste has not ended in America, it has been redesigned. Alexander writes that by targeting black men and other people of color, the U.S. justice system functions as a system of racial control. The book was published in 2010. Lauded by critics nationally, Alexander received a 2011 NAACP Image Award for outstanding literary work-non-fiction.

Alexander is a former law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. She now holds dual appointments at Ohio State University in the College of Law and Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.

The MLK Executive Planning Committee continues to meet monthly. Co-chairs Bobby Springer and Kathleen Underwood said they welcome more faculty and staff members who are interested in serving on the committee. People interested should contact Linda Rettig, Office of Multicultural Affairs, at x12177 or [email protected].