Former mayor of Morgantown, Charlene Jennings Marshall, will speak at the Center for Black Culture and Researchs seventh annual Ida B. Wells Lecture at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 10, in the Mountainlairs Rhododendron Room.
Marshall, a native of Monongalia County, was the first African-American mayor in the history of West Virginia, a post she held for seven years beginning in 1991. In 1994, she was voted Mayor of the Year.
Charlene is one of the most distinguished members of our community, and we are honored that she would share her wisdom and experience with our students for this program,said Katherine Bankole, director of the Center for Black Culture and Research.
Marshall served as president of the Morgantown NAACP for four years, and has been honored by the FBI with the Exceptional Service in the Public Interest Award.
In the West Virginia House of Delegates, she served as vice chair of political sub-divisions and on committees addressing government organization, roads and transportation, and health.
She is a member of St. Paul A.M.E. and serves on the Presidents Visiting Committee for Student Affairs and Social Justice at WVU .
The lecture is named in honor of Ida B. Wells, founding member of the NAACP and advocate for the rights of African-Americans and women,Bankole said.
Wells, born in 1862 in Mississippi, was the most celebrated African-American female journalist of her day. Her pursuits of truth, justice and fairness marked her life as one of the most influential in the history of African-Americans.
After graduating from Fisk University, Wells taught in a Memphis public school until 1891, when she left to devote her efforts full-time to writing for the Memphis Free Spirit, an African-American newspaper. Her articles dealing with the lynching of innocent African-American men won national attention and led to threats to her life and the forced extinction of the newspaper.
Continuing to write articles for several prominent newspapers throughout the country, Wells also lectured extensively in the United States and abroad against lynching,Bankole explained.She published A Red Record, a statistical treatment of lynchings in the United States, and became chairperson of the Anti-Lynching Bureau of the National Afro-American Council.
For more information on the lecture, call 293-7029.