Civil Rights Movement veterans Mary Sue and Eddie Short will present on their experiences as activists and organizers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Shaw, Mississippi, and beyond during the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lecture on Monday, April 8, from 3:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. in the AMU Lunda Room.
Each joined the civil rights struggle during a pivotal time in the dangerous 1960s. Eddie Short was a sharecropper, while Mary Sue Short (née Gellatly) was a recent college graduate. Day by day, their lives were threatened. Action after action, they were repeatedly jailed. They never knew what tomorrow might hold, or if they would live to see the freedom and liberation they struggled for.
During their time with SNCC, they worked and organized beside movement luminaries such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses, Stokely Carmichael, Lawrence Guyot, Andrew Hawkins and more. Their story – featured in the book “A Small Town Rises: A Sharecropper and A College Girl Join the Struggle for Justice in Shaw, Mississippi,” by Lee Anna Sherman – shows how two courageous freedom fighters joined other activists and townspeople to challenge the Jim Crow status quo, which changed Shaw, the Mississippi Delta, and our nation forever.
A light reception will follow the presentation in the adjoining Henke Lounge.
Register if you plan to attend. Questions can be directed to christopher.jeske@marquette.edu.
