January 22, 2001
NAACP's Mfume addressing convocation; Angela Davis to speak at outreach event
By LouiseDonahue
NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, who has been active in the fight to block confirmation
of former Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft as U.S. attorney general and Gale Norton as
secretary of the interior, will speak in Santa Cruz on Wednesday, January 24, as
part of UCSC's Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation.
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| Kweisi Mfume will discuss "Reaffirming America's Agenda" on Wednesday at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium. |
Shuttle buses will depart from all campus Metro stops at 6:15, 6:25, and 6:30 p.m. for the speech.
Mfume's appearance is one of several events planned for the convocation.
Earlier Wednesday, Angela Davis, a professor of the history of consciousness at UCSC,
will be the keynote speaker at a pre-convocation program on campus for 250 to 300
students from community colleges, middle schools, and high schools in the region.The
event will take place in the dining hall at Cowell College.
The program is cosponsored by the Early Academic Outreach Program and the Transfer
Partnerships Program, with support from Cowell College. Afterward, the students will
have dinner at the dining hall, then board buses to attend the Civic Center event.
Davis has authored five books, primarily in the field of feminist studies, and has
actively promoted prison reform.
She will also emcee the Civic Center event, and Debra Hill-Alston, president of the
Santa Cruz chapter of the NAACP, will introduce Mfume. The Rev. Samuel Hayes, Santa
Cruz Missionary Baptist Church, will give the invocation. A public reception will
follow the speech.
The program will include a performance by the student-run African Dance Troupe, which
will present two Senegalese dances, "Econkong" and "Doundoumba."
Mfume has announced that the National Organization for the Advancement of Colored
People will campaign against any U.S. senators who vote in favor of Ashcroft's nomination.
He has said Ashcroft has demonstrated contempt for the history and conditions of
African Americans and other Americans of color by making public comments issued in
1998 in Southern Partisan magazine praising Confederate leaders Robert E.
Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis.
The NAACP has also joined environmental groups in opposing the nomination of Bush's
choice of Norton for secretary of the interior because of her position regarding
the Confederacy and her opposition to minority scholarships and affirmative action.
In addition, the NAACP joined the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation and other
organizations in a lawsuit in Florida to eliminate alleged discriminatory and unequal
voting policies and practices from that state's electoral system.
