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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Freedom Rider Hank Thomas to speak at Nussbaum Lecture Series

Clarion-Ledger Reporter Jerry Mitchell to Speak at Nussbaum Lecture