About

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The Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture Series is an annual event at Millsaps. In 2008, Dr. John D. Bower, renal pioneer and friend of the late Nussbaum, endowed the lecture series, which is dedicated to men and women who have stood against racial bigotry and religious prejudice.

All lectures are free and open to the public.

2019 Lecture

2019 Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Civil Justice Lecture

Friday, April 5, 1:00 p.m.—Gertrude C. Ford Academic Complex, Room 215

The 2019 Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture will be held on Friday, April 5th at 1:00 p.m. in the Gertrude C. Ford Academic Complex, room 215. This year’s lecture, moderated by Dr. Kenneth Townsend, features a panel discussion led by Martha Bergmark and Rob McDuff, founding members of the Mississippi Center for Justice.

The Mississippi Center for Justice is a nonprofit, public interest law firm committed to advancing racial and economic justice. Supported and staffed by attorneys and other professionals, the Center develops and pursues strategies to combat discrimination and poverty statewide.

Bergmark and McDuff will discuss the ways in which our civil justice system fails to deliver equal justice under law, and what we can do to fix it.

2018 Lecture

From Vision to Decision: A Truth Telling Journey of Two Mississippi Museums

Friday, April 13, Noon—Gertrude C. Ford Academic Complex, Room 215

Lucy Allen

Lucy J. Allen, who served as project director for construction of the new Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in downtown Jackson, will present the 2018 Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture on April 13 at 1 p.m. at Millsaps College.

Pamela Junior, director of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, and Rachel Myers, director of the Mississippi History Museum, will join Allen in presenting “From Vision to Decision: A Truth Telling Journey of Two Mississippi Museums.”

2017 Lecture

Mississippi Embodied: Health Inequity, Counting Bodies, and Understanding Responsibility

Friday, April 7, Noon—Gertrude C. Ford Academic Complex, Room 215

Lamees El Sadek

Lamees S. El-sadek (C ‘11), a health professional and activist who focuses on the social and economic structures that contribute to health disparities, will present the 2017 Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture. After graduating from Millsaps, El-sadek worked as an Epidemiologist at the MS Department of Health before attending the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where she received a Master of Health Science in Social Factors of Health. While in Baltimore, she conducted research on Arab-American health disparities, healthcare for the homeless, and worked with the Baltimore City Health Department to develop curriculum and training for high school students on how to prevent dating violence. She is currently a Gates Millennium Scholar at the Harvard University T. H. Chan School of Public Health. El-sadek is widely published and is a blogger for Huffington Post. She will speak to the Millsaps audience about health disparities in Mississippi and what can be done to improve the lives of Mississippians in the changing landscape of healthcare.

2016 Lecture

Change from Within: Bringing Balance and Truth to the Historic Natchez Tableaux by Madeline Iles

Friday, April 15, Noon—Gertrude C. Ford Academic Complex, Room 215

woman giving a speech

Madeline Iles, senior history major at Millsaps, interned for Ed King, Jerry Mitchell, and Mississippi Public Broadcasting. These experiences and her interest in media as a tool for producing social change inspired her to film a documentary about her work to transform the traditional Natchez Tableaux. Throughout its 85 year history, the Tableaux had presented a romanticized view of the Old South. Madeline worked to showcase historical facts, linking the past to current issues of social justice. In addition to changing the program to acknowledge the South’s defeat in the Civil War, Madeline pushed for the meaningful inclusion of African Americans in the program along with a frank representation of slavery. Madeline’s project documents the unprecedented actions taken in 2015’s Confederate Pageant and gives a first-hand view of social change in action.

2015 Lecture

The Courage of Their Convictions: Millsaps Students Resist the Status Quo

Friday, April 24
12:30pm – 1:30pm
Gertrude C. Ford Academic Complex, Room 215
Free and open to the public

The 2015 Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture Series, which is dedicated to men and women who have stood against racial bigotry and religious prejudice, is entitled “The Courage of Their Convictions: Millsaps Students Resist the Status Quo,” honors Rabbi Nussbaum and others who have often been unrecognized for their contributions in standing for civil rights and social justice.

Throughout the College’s history, Millsaps students, with the support and encouragement of forward-thinking faculty, have opened their eyes, ears, and hearts to injustice in the world and the need for social change in their communities. A panel of Millsaps alumni and faculty will share their experiences in resisting the status quo and speaking out against the police violence on Jackson State University’s campus in 1967 and 1970 that left three black men dead and others wounded. What moved them to act? How do these historic events relate to current events? What can students and faculty learn from them?

Panelists: Tonny Algood, C’71; David Doggett, C’68; Jeanne Middleton-Hairston, C’71; Dr. T.W. Lewis, Professory Emeritus; Kay Sloan, C’71

The annual Rabbi Perry Nussbaum civil justice awards and lecture series honor Rabbi Nussbaum and other individuals, many of whom have gone unrecognized, for their selfless contributions to the civil rights movement in Mississippi and beyond. Beginning in 2014, the award and lecture series has been expanded to honor more contemporary work around civil and social justice issues. The Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture Series has been graciously endowed at Millsaps College by John D. Bower, M.D.

2014 Lecture

Bishop Clay F. Lee Jr. Speaks at Nussbaum Lecture

Lee was recently featured in a New York Times article focusing on a sermon he gave in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1964 in which he invoked Herod describing the bigotry he saw.

“We are honored to have Bishop Clay F. Lee as the 2014 Rabbi Perry Nussbaum lecturer at Millsaps, as he is an exemplar of the College’s strategic plan goal to promote our heritage of social justice, freedom of thought, acceptance of diversity, and critical reflection on the most important questions in life,” said Mike Hutchison, vice president for institutional advancement.

The annual Rabbi Perry Nussbaum civil justice awards and lecture series honor Rabbi Nussbaum and other individuals, many of whom have gone unrecognized, for their selfless contributions to the civil rights movement in Mississippi and beyond.  Beginning in 2014, the award and lecture series has been expanded to honor more contemporary work around civil and social justice issues.

Recipients of the 2014 awards include Dr. W. Charles Sallis for his civil rights work including co-writing and editing the first Mississippi history textbook to include an honest presentation of racial bigotry, violence, and oppression in the state; Sara del Castillo, a Millsaps senior honored for her work around immigrants’ rights; Rev. William P. Davis, honored posthumously for his leadership in Committee for Concern, a network of clergy who helped restore African American churches that were burned during the Civil Rights Movement; and Hazel Brannon Smith, honored posthumously for her work as a newspaper publisher and editor who won a Pulitzer Prize for her “steadfast adherence to her editorial duties in the face of great pressure and opposition” from the Holmes County Citizens’ Council, which had formed in 1954, and from its segregationist supporters.  The 2014 awards banquet will be held Thursday, April 3, 2014 followed by Bishop Lee’s lecture on Friday, April 4, 2014.

The Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture Series has been graciously endowed at Millsaps College by John D. Bower, M.D.

Bishop Clay Lee

Millsaps alumnus and United Methodist Bishop Clay F. Lee Jr. (’51) was the featured speaker for the 2014 Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture Series, which is dedicated to men and women who have stood against racial bigotry and religious prejudice. He gave a lecture on Friday, April 4 at 12:30 p.m. in Robert and Dee Leggett Special Events Center in the A. Boyd Campbell College Center.

2013 Lecture

Civil Rights Leader Myrlie Evers Brings Message of Peace, Justice, Dialogue to Millsaps

Civil rights icon Myrlie Evers filled the Robert and Dee Leggett Special Events Center in the A. Boyd Campbell College Center on April 5 for the 2013 Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture Series, urging students to embrace and recognize the history of social justice at Millsaps College, while remembering her past in the capital city.

group photo with Myrlie Evers

Dean Dr. S. Keith Dunn, Myrlie Evers, student Chelsea Wright, and Dr. Rob Pearigen pose after the Nussbaum Lecture

Myrlie Evers

Myrlie Evers speaks during the 2013 Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture

The widow could have let anger take over after the events of that night in 1963, but her strength and faith didn’t let her live a small life. Evers says she recognized that hatred is dangerous and destructive. The family moved from  Mississippi to California to get away from the reminders of Medgar’s death, including a bullet hole in the refrigerator, and Evers knew revenge had to come in forms other than of rage. With a smile, Evers spoke about the poetic justice of learning that her husband’s killer, Byron De La Beckwith, had a jail cell window facing a post office with Medgar Evers’ name on it.

“If you must get back at people, do it by love and success. Reach out to others and help them understand that hatred is a killer,” she said.

Myrlie Evers continues to work closely with the Medgar Evers Institute, its name having been changed by the board of directors in 2012 to the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute to recognize Myrlie Evers’ own work in social justice and equal rights. She will spearhead the 50th Anniversary Commemoration of the Assassination of Medgar Evers in June 2013.

In January 2012, she assumed the position of distinguished scholar-in-residence at Alcorn State University in Lorman, the college where she and Medgar Evers met.

She was selected by President Barack Obama to offer the invocation at his second presidential inauguration on Jan. 21, 2013, the first woman and first lay person to be so honored.

In addition to Myrlie Evers, the series honored four other Nussbaum Laureates for their contributions to the civil rights movement in Mississippi and beyond. They are:

  • Dr. Jack Geiger, who has dedicated most of his career to the problems of health, poverty, and human rights. From 1965 until 1971, he was director of the first urban and first rural health centers in the U.S. in Boston and in the Mississippi Delta in Mound Bayou.
  • Dr. Alton B. Cobb, who served as Mississippi’s chief health officer from 1973 to 1993. During his tenure, he and his staff at the Mississippi State Department of Health enacted the nation’s most efficient way of getting baby formula into the hands of mothers who couldn’t afford it. Also, during that time the state had the highest immunization rates and the lowest tuberculosis rates.
  • The late Joshua Morse III, dean of the University of Mississippi School of Law in the 1960s. He admitted the school’s first black students, a move that led to the desegregation of Mississippi’s legal profession and judiciary.
  • The late Robert Quarles Marston, a leading medical educator and researcher, who became dean of the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in 1961. During his administration, the first black medical students were admitted and the first black professors were hired, which provided precedents for the peaceful racial desegregation of southern medical schools and teaching hospitals.

2011 Lecture

Freedom Rider Hank Thomas to speak at Nussbaum Lecture Series

Hank Thomas

Come hear Civil Rights activist and original Freedom Rider Hank Thomas speak about the Rabbi Perry Nussbaum and the Freedom Riders at 12:30 p.m. on March 25 in room 215 of the Ford Academic Complex at Millsaps College. The lecture is free.

Thomas will be the featured speaker for the Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture Series, an annual event at Millsaps. Dr. John D. Bower, renal pioneer and friend of the late Nussbaum, endowed in 2008 the lecture series, which is dedicated to men and women who have stood against racial bigotry and religious prejudice.

Thomas is president of Victoria Hospitality Properties, which owns and operates Marriott Hotel franchises, and vice president of Hayon and Hayon II, which own and operate McDonald’s franchises. Thomas is also a veteran Civil Rights foot soldier with 22 arrests and a Vietnam War Purple Heart recipient.

2010 Lecture

Clarion-Ledger Reporter Jerry Mitchell to Speak at Nussbaum Lecture

Jerry Mitchell

Clarion-Ledger investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell is scheduled to speak about “Stories of Justice and Reconciliation in Mississippi” at 12:30 p.m. on March 26 in room 215 of the Ford Academic Complex at Millsaps College. The lecture is free.

Mitchell will be the featured speaker for the Rabbi Perry Nussbaum Lecture Series, an annual event at Millsaps. Dr. John D. Bower, renal pioneer and a friend of the late Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, endowed in 2008 the lecture series, which is dedicated to men and women who have stood against racial bigotry and religious prejudice.

Heralded as a “dogged and courageous” journalist, Mitchell’s work has helped bring unpunished killers from the civil rights era to justice, including Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 assassination of NAACP leader Medgar Evers; Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers for ordering the fatal firebombing of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer in 1966; Bobby Cherry for the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four girls; and Edgar Ray Killen for helping organize the June 21, 1964, killings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

Mitchell has received more than 30 national awards for his work, including being named a MacArthur Fellow. The MacArthur Foundation awards $500,000 fellowships to individuals who have used their gifts to improve the world.

Millsaps Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the College David Davis said Mitchell’s work as a reporter makes him a good fit as a speaker for the lecture series. “The lecture series committee felt that Jerry Mitchell would be a perfect speaker to address the politics of race in the 60s and its legacy in Mississippi of 2010 because of his courageous work over the years,” he said.

For more information about the lecture, contact Millsaps College at 601.974.1005.