Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker will be in Wilmington on Wednesday as part of a dayslong celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
Celebrating the Dream–an ongoing five-county program covering New Hanover, Brunswick, Bladen, Pender and Onslow–is sponsored by the Countywide Community Development Corporation (CCDC) in Navassa, a nonprofit dedicated to addressing socioeconomic issues.
Walker, best known for her novel, “The Color Purple,” will appear on July 2–the anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964–during Celebrating the Dream’s Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Presidential Legacy Awards Luncheon at noon at the Wilmington Convention Center.
Walker’s visit is just one of many activities centered around the planned commemoration of the Civil Rights Act.
A socioeconomic summit gets underway today beginning at 10 a.m. at the convention center, with a host of panel discussions and guest speakers, followed by a town meeting from 7-8:30 p.m. to address protecting the civil rights for the disenfranchised.
“We are trying to get younger folks to see where we came from and what we went through during segregation,” event co-chairman Moses Stanley said. “By ‘we,’ I mean those of us who attended the 15 or 16 segregated schools in those five southeastern counties.”
Those being recognized during the celebration, Stanley added, are “achievers who came out of those schools,” including Ret. Maj. Gen. Joseph McNeil, one of the “Greensboro Four,” a group credited with starting the sit-in movement during the early 1960s.
Celebrating the Dream launched earlier this summer with an ongoing exhibit, “School Pride: The Eastern N.C. Story,” by artist Willie Cole at Cameron Art Museum. The installation “reflects the real or physical desegregation in N.C. through the use of conceptual or emotional triggers and historical documents,” according to a release from the museum.
Internationally acclaimed, Cole has ties to the area, as his father is a native of Navassa.
Stanley said he also hopes Celebrating the Dream will instill in youth a commitment to helping others.
“We are trying to create an interest in volunteerism,” he noted.
To that end, a Day of Joint Community Services was held Friday throughout the five counties.
Appearing with Walker at the legacy luncheon Wednesday will be civil rights leader Dr. C.T. Vivian. Vivian, a close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., now runs a leadership institute in Atlanta. Last year, President Barack Obama awarded Vivian a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his long resume of civil rights work.
“He was with Dr. King during the civil rights movement,” CCDC director Juanita Harper said in an earlier interview. “In his later years, he created a leadership institute that does a lot of what we do now. So it was befitting…that we learn from him as we continue helping low-wealth communities.”
Hilary Snow is a reporter at Port City Daily. Reach her at (910) 772-6341 or hilary.s@hometownwilmington.com.
