Keynote Named For W Those Who Dared Convocation

PRESS RELEASE

COLUMBUS, Miss. – Native Mississippian and civil rights activist Dr. Leslie-Burl McLemore of Walls will deliver the address at the Those Who Dared Convocation commemorating the 50^th anniversary of desegregation at Mississippi University for Women.

McLemore

The program will honor the three freshman and three graduate students who enrolled at then Mississippi State College for Women in 1966–forever changing the face of the university.

McLemore’s keynote address is titled Mississippi in 1966. Convocation is open to the public.

Currently, Dr. McLemore is professor emeritus of political science at Jackson State University. He is a coach-mentor with The W. K. Kellogg Community Leadership Network and adviser to the Office of Alumni Development at Rust College in Holly Springs. During his tenure at JSU, Dr. McLemore served as interim president in 2010.

At JSU, he was the founding director of the Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy and was founding chair of the Department of political science, as well as former dean of the graduate school and founding director of the Office of Research Administration. He is a past chair of the Mississippi Humanities Council and past vice-chair of the Board of the Federation of State Humanities Council.

Dr. McLemore was elected to the Jackson City Council in a special election in April 1999. He has served as president of the council six out of the 10 years on the council.

He is a veteran of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. As a student at Rust College, he was the founding president of the college chapter of the NAACP. There he organized and led several demonstrations and voter registration drives. He worked mostly in Benton, Marshall, Tate and Desoto counties.

McLemore became involved with the student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1962 and was the Northern regional coordinator for the 1963 Freedom Vote campaign, which eventually led to the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

He was a founding member and elected vice chair of the MFDP in 1964. The same year he was elected as one of the 64 Freedom Party delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

McLemore worked closely with Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses, Victoria Gray Adams, Annie Devine, Aaron Henry and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi and other parts of the American South.

In 1997, McLemore and colleagues formed the Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy. Its mission is to engage primary and secondary schools systemically in the exploration of the Civil Rights Movement.

Dr. McLemore is often invited to speak to various groups and organizations in the state and across the country. He is the author of several articles. His most recent publication is “The Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy: Engaging a Curriculum and Pedagogy” with Michelle D. Deardorff, Jeffrey Kolnick and Thandekile R.M. Mvusi. He is under contract with Bedford St Martin’s Press for a book on the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project (Freedom Summer), due in 2016.

He is active in the community devoting his time to mentoring young people, including members of 100 Black Men of American chapter in Jackson. McLemore also is the founding chair of the Youth Leadership Development program for middle school students in Jackson.

Dr. McLemore earned his doctorate in government from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and he has done post-doctoral work at The Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University. He obtained his master of arts degree in political science from Atlanta University in Georgia and bachelor of arts degree in social science and economics from Rust College.

He is married to attorney Betty A. Mallett and they have one son, Leslie II, who is a lawyer living in Washington, D.C.