The 20th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation will be held Jan. 21, 2008, at 1 p.m. in Hoversten Chapel. The convocation, entitled “Visions of a Just Society: Dr. King’s Legacy,” will feature guest Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, professor of African-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts.
Michael Thelwell was born in Ulster Spring, Jamaica in 1939. After graduating from Jamaica College, he went to work as a public relations assistant for the Jamaica Industrial Development Corporation in 1958. He moved to the United States in 1959 and received a B.A. from Howard University and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Thelwell has worked as director for the Students Non-violent Coordinating Committee in Washington D.C., where he also worked for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (1964-65). He has been a professor in the African-American Studies department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst since 1969. He is the author of two screenplays, several articles and a novel, “The Harder They Come.” Continue reading “Ekwueme Michael Thelwell to speak at the Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation Jan. 21, 2008”