North Carolina Central University (NCCU) is celebrating Black History Month with a film, panel discussions and lectures, including an appearance by a philosopher, author and social activist Cornel West, Ph.D.

 

West, who is speaking as part of NCCU’s Department of Student Engagement and Leadership Rock the Mic Lecture Series, is a professor of philosophy and Christian practice at Union Theological Seminary and a professor emeritus at Princeton University, where he earned his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1980 after graduating magna cum laude from Harvard in three years.

 

He has taught at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Paris and authored more than 20 books, including  Race Matters and  Democracy Matters, as well as a memoir,  Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud.

 

West served as an advisor for Sen. Bernie Sanders on the Democratic platform committee during the 2016 presidential race and remains committed to social activism. He was arrested in October 2014 while protesting the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and again in during a demonstration on the one-year anniversary of that shooting.

 

West’s lecture will take place at 7 p.m. Feb. 10 in B.N. Duke Auditorium on the NCCU campus.

 

Additional Black History Month activities sponsored, by the NCCU Department of History, include:

 

A Feb. 1 screening of the documentary “King: A Filmed Record… Montgomery to Memphis” will begin at 5:30 p.m. NCCU Law School Great Hall.

 

On Feb. 7, Professor Robert Trowers will present a lecture on “Thoughts on Carter G. Woodson's ‘Mis-Education of the Negro’” at 10:40 a.m in Edwards Recital Hall in the Music Department.

 

On Feb. 16, Zelda Lockhart, holder of the alumni endowed chair in the Department of Language and Literature at NCCU, will present a public reading from her historical novel Cold Running Creek, which won an Honor Fiction Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association beginning at 10:40 a.m. in James. E. Shepard Library, second floor. 

 

Also on Feb. 16, the first in a two-part student-led discussion of the influential text Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967) by Stokley Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton will take place at 7 p.m. in Edmonds Classroom Building, Room 103. The second part of that discussion will be held Feb. 22 also in Edmonds Classroom Building, Room 103 at 7 p.m. 

 

On Feb. 23, Lydia Lindsey, Ph.D., will present a lecture on “From the Negro Question to Black Lives Matter: An Analysis of Radical Race Theory of Grace P. Campbell and Claudia Jones” at 5 p.m. in Room 207 of the Edmonds Classroom Building, Room 207.

 

A lecture on “Nat Turner’s Memory by the Black Masses in the 1930s” will be presented by Tony Frazier, Ph.D., at 11:35 a.m. in Edmonds Classroom Building, Room 201A.

 

North Carolina Central University prepares students to succeed in the global marketplace. Selected as 2016 HBCU of the Year by HBCU Digest, NCCU offers flagship programs in the sciences, technology, nursing, education, law, business and the arts. Founded in 1910 as a liberal arts college for African-Americans, NCCU remains committed to diversity in higher education. Our alumni excel in a wide variety of academic and professional fields. Visit www.nccu.edu.