WUSTL to honor legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

“The Past Is Alive … The Work Is Not Yet Done” is the theme of Washington University in St. Louis’ 24th annual celebration honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 17, in Graham Chapel on the Danforth Campus.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton will begin the program with a welcome and remarks. Shanti Parikh, PhD, associate professor of anthropology and of African & African-American Studies, both in Arts & Sciences, will present the keynote address. Jeff Small, a reporter with KSDK television in St. Louis, will serve as master of ceremonies.

The Rosa L. Parks Award for Meritorious Service to the Community also will be presented.

The program will include musical performances from WUSTL student groups Black Anthology, Visions Gospel Choir and WU-Slam.

A reception in the Danforth University Center will follow the program.

For more information, call (314) 935-5965 or visit diversity.wustl.edu/mlk/Pages/default.aspx.

Other WUSTL MLK events:

The School of Medicine will present its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Lecture at 4 p.m. Monday, Jan. 17, in the Eric P. Newman Education Center.

Charles J. Ogletree, JD, the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and the founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard University, will be the guest speaker.

Ogletree has earned an international reputation by studying complex issues of law and by working to secure the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution for everyone equally under the law. He has examined these issues in the classroom, on the Internet, in the pages of prestigious law journals, as a public defender in the courtroom and in public television forums.

His most recent book is The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in America.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information or to RSVP, call (314) 362-6854 or e-mail diversity@msnotes.wustl.edu.

The Society of Black Student Social Workers (SBSSW) at the Brown School will host the fifth annual “Financial Freedom Seminar: Recovering from the Recession, Reaching for the Future” from 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 22, in Brown and Goldfarb halls.

The seminar, which is free and open to the public, is designed for St. Louis community youth and adults interested in building wealth, repairing and maintaining good credit, purchasing a home or starting and expanding a business.

Co-chairing the event are SBSSW members and Brown School graduate students Jessica Eiland and Shellena Eskridge. The seminar will begin with a keynote address by Yvonne Sparks, senior manager of community development for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

To register and view a complete list of presenters, visit brownschool.wustl.edu.

For more information, e-mail sbssw@brownschool.wustl.edu or call (314) 935-3466.

The School of Law and the Black Law Students Association will host Bryan Stevenson, JD, co-director of the Equal Justice and Capital Defender Clinic at New York University Law School and executive director of the Equal Justice Institute, as the 2011 Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Speaker at noon Thursday, Feb. 3, in the Anheuser-Busch Hall Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom. Stevenson will speak on “Poverty, Incarceration and Injustice in America.”

For more information, call (314) 935-8598.