2026 Keynote - The Power of Resistance and Resilience with Rosalyn Pelles
Join us in person or online on Thursday, January 29 from 4- 5:30 PM for the powerful, national voice for social and economic justice, Rosalyn "Roz" Pelles. A survivor of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre, Roz has spent her life advancing Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of justice and equality.
Keynote Details
Thursday, January 29, 2026
4:00 - 5:30 PM
Ira Allen Chapel & Online
This event is free and open to the public.
More on Rosalyn Pelles
Veteran of the civil and workers’ rights movements and survivor of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre, Rosalyn Woodward Pelles has spent nearly six decades advancing Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of justice and equality.
She began her activism as a teenager with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and has since become a nationally respected leader in labor, faith, and grassroots organizing. Through her leadership with the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, her advisory role with the Union of Southern Service Workers, and her work with dozens of institutions dedicated to justice and equity, Ms. Pelles continues to be a powerful national voice for social and economic justice and against racism, white supremacy, and political violence.
Throughout her career, Ms. Pelles has held prominent leadership roles, including Assistant Director and Lecturer at the Yale University Divinity School’s Center for Public Theology and Public Policy; Vice President of Repairers of the Breach; Executive Director of the Rainbow Coalition; Director of the Civil, Human and Women’s Rights Department of the AFL-CIO; and Executive Director of the Union Community Fund, the AFL-CIO’s national labor charity. She has also provided decades of strategic leadership to labor and community organizations across the South.
Rosalyn Pelles’ work and contributions to social justice and the labor movement have been widely recognized, including the in the book Women Who Change the World: Stories from the Fight for Social Justice. She has received numerous honors, including recognition by the Institute for Policy Studies as one of the nation’s Outstanding African American Women Labor Leaders.
Across a lifetime of organizing, Rosalyn Pelles has been dedicated to building broad-based social movements that bridge lines of race, class, gender, and geography—advancing justice, dignity, and democracy for all.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from North Carolina Central University and a Juris Doctor from Howard University School of Law.
2025 Keynote - Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price with Dr. Anthony Jack
Join us in person or online on Thursday, January 30 from 4- 5:30 PM for acclaimed author, scholar, winner of numerous literary awards, and first generation student, Dr. Anthony Abraham Jack as he makes connections to Dr. King's legacy.
More on Dr. Anthony Abraham Jack
Self-proclaimed as a sociologist, first generation student and avid knitter, Dr. Anthony Abraham Jack is also a celebrated author of the books The Privileged Poor and Class Dismissed.
Dr. Jack is the inaugural faculty director of the Newbury Center and associate professor of higher education leadership at Boston University. His research documents the overlooked diversity among lower-income undergraduates: the “doubly disadvantaged”—those who enter college from local, typically distressed public high schools—and the “privileged poor,” or those who do so from boarding, day, and preparatory high schools. His scholarship appears in the Common Reader, Du Bois Review, Social Problems, Sociological Forum, and Sociology of Education and has earned awards from the American Sociological Association, American Educational Studies Association, Association for the Study of Higher Education, Eastern Sociological Society, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
Dr. Jack held fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the National Science Foundation and was a 2015 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow. In 2016, the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan named him an Emerging Diversity Scholar. In 2020, Muhlenberg College awarded him an honorary doctorate for his work in transforming higher education.
Dr. Jack is the author of The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students and Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price. The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Chronicle of Higher Education, Huffington Post, the Nation, American Conservative Magazine, National Review, the Washington Post, Vice, Vox, and NPR have featured his research and writing as well as biographical profiles of his experiences as a first-generation college student.
2024 Keynote - Creating a Beloved Community with Dr. Damon A. Williams
Visionary and inspirational leader, and Dr. Williams is one of the nation’s most recognized experts in strategic diversity leadership, youth development, corporate responsibility, and organizational change.
Watch the 2024 Keynote Watch Dr. Williams on Across the Fence Visit Dr. Williams' websiteMore on Dr. Williams
Dr. Damon A. Williams is a visionary and inspirational leader, and one of the nation’s recognized experts in strategic diversity leadership, youth development, corporate responsibility, and organizational change.
For four years, he led a $250M social impact portfolio for the world’s largest youth development company, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, representing the interests of nearly 4M diverse youth and teens as Senior Vice President for Programs and Chief Education Officer.
One of the original architects of the Inclusive Excellence concept in American higher education, he is author of the best-selling Strategic Diversity Leadership and the Chief Diversity Officer, he is a global thought leader having worked with more than 1,000 colleges and universities, Fortune 100 companies, foundations, and government agencies, as keynote speaker, strategist, educator, and social impact leader.
As the University of Michigan celebrates her 200-year anniversary, he was recently awarded the Bicentennial Leadership Award, a one-time honor given to 20 trailblazing alumni, who exemplify the best of the academic and leadership values of the Universities 200,000 living alumni.
He is currently chief catalyst for the Center for Strategic Diversity Leadership and Social Innovation and a Senior Scholar and Innovation Fellow at the Wisconsin Equity, and Inclusion (Wei) Laboratory of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he previously served as Associate Vice Chancellor and inaugural Chief Diversity, Equity, and Educational Achievement Officer.
Dr. Williams received his PhD from the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Higher and Post-Secondary Education (CSHPE) in Organizational Behavior and Management, and his MS and BS degrees from Miami University in Educational Leadership and Sociology and Black World Studies, respectively.
2023 Keynote - The Fullness of Ourselves with Carolynn Finney, Ph.D.
The 2023 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Keynote with was presented by Dr. Carolyn Finney. Dr. Finney is a story teller, author and a cultural geographer.
Watch the 2023 Keynote Visit Carolyn's website