Tickets Now on Sale for Cameron University’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration

Tickets are now on sale for Cameron University and Cameron Campus Ministry’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration banquet. This year’s keynote speaker is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eugene Robinson, who will present “We’re Someplace We’ve Never Been: Race, Diversity and the New America.” The banquet is scheduled for Monday, January 19 at 6:30 p.m. in the Aggie Rec Center. Tickets are $35 for adults and $15 for students and are available by calling Cameron Campus Ministry at 580-357-7226. The deadline to purchase tickets is Monday, January 12.

Robinson, whose nationally syndicated column appears in the Lawton Constitution, will also be featured during an afternoon session starting at 2:30 p.m. in the McCasland Ballroom of the McMahon Centennial Complex. The afternoon discussion is open to the public at no charge.

In his keynote presentation, Robinson will provide a compelling look at race relations and diversity today, explaining why old conceptions of race in America are obsolete. Born into the segregated South, Robinson will share his memories, telling of the civil rights movement’s culminating years during a time when he was one of a handful of black students at a predominantly white high school in South Carolina. While he shares the strides that have been made in the enormous educational and economic progress made by African-Americans since the 1960s as well as the sharp increase in interracial marriage seen over the last few decades, he will also show that there is much that remains in educating people that race is ultimately meaningless - except as an artifact of society.

Robinson writes a twice-a-week column on politics and culture for the Washington Post, contributes to the newspaper’s PostPartisan blog, and hosts a weekly online chat with readers. In a three-decade career at The Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper’s Style section. He started writing a column for the Op-Ed page in 2005. In 2009, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for “his eloquent columns on the 2008 presidential campaign that focus on the election of the first African-American president, showcasing graceful writing and grasp of the larger historic picture.” He has been a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board since 2010.

Robinson is the author of “Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America” (2010), “Last Dance in Havana” (2004), and “Coal to Cream: A Black Man’s Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race” (1999).

The 2015 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration is co-sponsored by Cameron Campus Ministry and Cameron University. For more information, please contact Cameron Campus Ministry at (580) 357-7226.