“Where Do We Go From Here…” to be discussed on Nov. 15

Hello Everybody,

Hope you’re enjoying reading “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Our next discussion will be held at 6 p.m., Monday, Nov. 15, at the Java & News Cyber Cafe inside the H.T. Sampson Library.

This will be our last book discussion for 2010 and I hope we can generate lots of excitement for our January selection. Please vote for your choice as the January reading from the selections below.

Remember, the President’s Campus Reading Community is open to the general public. To join, send an email with your name, class (if you’re a student) and email address to publicrelations@jsums.edu

 

 

The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman 
…Thomas L. Friedman includes fresh stories and insights to help us understand the flattening of the world. Weaving new information into his overall thesis, and answering the questions he has been most frequently asked by parents across the country, this third edition also includes two new chapters–on how to be a political activist and social entrepreneur in a flat world; and on the more troubling question of how to manage our reputations and privacy in a world where we are all becoming publishers and public figures.

Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America 1619-1966  by Lerone Bennett, Jr. 

The black experience in America—starting from its origins in western Africa up to the present day—is examined in this seminal study from a prominent African American figure. The entire historical timeline of African Americans is addressed, from the Colonial period through the civil rights upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. The most recent scholarship on the geographic, social, economic, and cultural journeys of African Americans, together with vivid portraits of key black leaders, complete this comprehensive reference.

 The Art of War by Sun Tzu
 “A clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.” So wrote Sun Tzu 2,500 years ago.

Sun Tzu’s incisive blueprint for battlefield strategy is as relevant to today’s combatants in business, politics, and everyday life as it once was to the warlords of ancient China. The Art of War is one of the most useful books ever written on leading with wisdom, an essential tool for modern corporate warriors battling to gain the advantage in the boardroom, and for anyone struggling to gain the upper hand in confrontations and competitions.

Photos from book discussion “The Mis-Education of the Negro” by Carter G. Woodson

The President’s Campus Reading Community’s book discussion of “The Mis-Education of the Negro” by Carter G. Woodson, was led by Professor C. Liegh McInnis, Ms. Angela D. Stewart, and Dr. Leslie Burl Mclemore., on Tuesday, Oct. 19.  

The next book is “Where Do We Go from Here:  Chaos or Community” by Martin Luther King, Jr.

The President’s Campus Reading Community is open to the general public. To join, send an email with your name, class (if you’re a student) and email address to publicrelations@jsums.edu.

Click Here to See Complete Photo Album

Vote for which book should be the next reading for President’s book club

 Hello Everybody,

Hope you’re enjoying reading The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson. Our next discussion will be held at 6 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 19, at the Java & News Cyber Cafe inside the H.T. Sampson Library. 

Now, I want you to decide which book will be our November reading. Answer the poll question below.  Thanks.

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Coming of Age in Mississippi by Ann Moody

Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till’s lynching. Before then, she had “known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was…the fear of being killed just because I was black.” In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life.

An all-A student whose dream of going to college is realized when she wins a basketball scholarship, she finally dares to join the NAACP in her junior year. Through the NAACP and later through CORE and SNCC she has first-hand experience of the demonstrations and sit-ins that were the mainstay of the civil rights movement, and the arrests and jailings, the shotguns, fire hoses, police dogs, billy clubs and deadly force that were used to destroy it.

A deeply personal story but also a portrait of a turning point in our nation’s destiny, this autobiography lets us see history in the making, through the eyes of one of the footsoldiers in the civil rights movement.

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Where do we go from HERE:  Chaos or Community by Martin Luther King, Jr.

 In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this significantly prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten years, we find King’s acute analysis of American race relations and the state of the movement after a decade of civil rights efforts. Here he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America’s future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering, powerfully asserting that humankind—for the first time—has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.

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Local People by John Dittmer

 For decades the most racially repressive state in the nation fought bitterly and violently to maintain white supremacy. John Dittmer traces the monumental battle waged by civil rights organizations and by local people, particularly courageous members of the black communities who were willing to put their lives on the line to establish basic human rights for all citizens of the state. Local People tells the whole grim story in depth for the first time, from the unsuccessful attempts of black World War II veterans to register to vote to the seating of a civil rights-oriented Mississippi delegation at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Particularly dramatic – and heartrending – is Dittmer’s account of the tumultuous decade of the sixties: the freedom rides of 1961, which resulted in the imprisonment at Parchman of dozens of participants; the violent reactions to protests in McComb and Jackson and to voter registration drives in Greenwood and other cities; the riot in Oxford when James Meredith enrolled at Ole Miss; the cowardly murder of long-time leader Medgar Evers; and the brutal Klan lynchings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Dittmer looks closely at the policies and actions of the Kennedy administration, which, bowing to Mississippi’s powerful senators John Stennis and James Eastland, refused to intervene even in the face of obvious collusion among local officials and vigilantes. Through oral history accounts readers will come to know many of the local people and grass-roots organizers who worked, and in some cases gave their lives, for the cause of civil rights.

Photos from President’s Campus Reading Community book discussion, “The Souls of Black Folk”

 

 

 The  President’s Campus Reading Community’s book discussion of “The Souls of Black Folk” by W.E.B. DuBois, will be aired at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 12 on JSU-TV (Comcast Channel 14). The discussion was led by Interim President Leslie Burl McLemore.  The President’s Campus Reading community is open to the general public.  To join, send an email with your name, class (if you’re a student) and email address to publicrelations@jsums.edu.

Click here to see complete photo album

President’s Campus Reading Community book discussion – Today, 6 p.m.

 Jackson State University Interim President Leslie Burl McLemore will lead a discussion about the book, “The Souls of Black Folk,” by W.E.B. DuBois at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 29, at the Cyber Café on the first floor of the H.T. Sampson Library. The entire campus community and the public are invited. The book discussion is the first session of the President’s Campus Reading Community, which the university launched this fall to inspire reading throughout campus and the community. About 100 students, staff, faculty and community members are expected to attend.

Those who can’t attend can watch a live webcast of the discussion on the Jackson State website, www.jsums.edu. 

The event is part of a book reading series that JSU will host throughout the academic year. The next book selection for the President’s Campus Reading Community will be announced at the end of Wednesday’s discussion, and 10 copies of the book will be raffled off to participants. For more information or to join the group, visit presidentreading.wordpress.com.

Welcome to the JSU President’s Campus Reading Community

 

I hope you are enjoying our first book selection, The Souls of Black Folk.  Here are some memorable passages for me:

“Herein lies the tragedy of the age:  not that men are poor, –all men know something of poverty, not that men are wicked,–who is good?  No that men are ignorant,–what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.”

 ”It is, then, the strife of all honorable men of the twentieth century to see that in the future competition of races the survival of the fittest shall mean the triumph of the good, the beautiful, and the true; that we may be able to preserve for future civilization all that is really fine and noble and strong, and not continue to put a premium on greed and impudence and cruelty.”

“Even so is the hope that sang in the songs of my fathers well sung.  If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time Americana shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.  Free, free as the sunshine trickling down the morning into these high windows of mine, free as yonder fresh young voices welling up to me from the caverns of brick and mortar below—swelling with song, instinct with life, tremulous treble and darkening bass.  My children, my little children, are singing to the sunshine, and this they sing.”

 What passages speak to you?