Convocation Lecture Caps Reading Experience - Public Invited

The first Convocation Lecture of the year at Utah State University features a guest who played an important role in the civil rights movement in America. The lecture also caps activities in USU’s week-long Connections program.

Carlotta Walls LaNier, a member of the “Little Rock Nine,” speaks at USU Saturday, Aug. 26, at 9:30 a.m. in the Kent Concert Hall of the Chase Fine Arts Center. Students, faculty, staff and community members are encouraged to attend.

 

he lecture culminates the “Connections 2006” summer reading experience. Students in the program participated in this shared experience by reading Melba Patillo Beal’s book “Warrior Don’t Cry.” Members of the community, including a number of book clubs, were also invited to read the book, in which the author recounts the experiences of nine African-American high school students who became known as the “Little Rock Nine.”

 

The event recounted in the book rocked the world, as the young students exposed themselves to amazing violence as they took the steps to change the social standards of that time, said Noelle Call, director of USU’s office of Retention and First-Year Experience and Connections director.

 

At age 14 in 1957, Carlotta Walls was the youngest of the nine courageous students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., following the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic decision, Brown v. Board of Education.

 

LaNer’s biography emphasizes that as a girl, she understood the importance of education to a promising future. Enrolling in Central High, she and the other eight black students were greeted with anger, violence, intimidation and threats. With armed guards, she was escorted to her classes for the school year 1957-58. She graduated in 1960 and then attended Michigan State University for two years before moving to Denver, Colo. She graduated from Colorado State College (now the University of Northern Colorado) and began working at the YWCA as a program administrator for teens. In 1977, she founded LaNier and Company, a real estate brokerage company.

 

The NAACP awarded the prestigious Spingarn Medal to LaNier in 1958. She has been a member of the Urban League, NAACP, as well as president of the Little Rock Nine Foundation, a scholarship organization dedicated to ensuring equal access to education for African- Americans. She serves as a trustee for the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, and for the University of Northern Colorado. In 1999, President Clinton bestowed the nation’s highest civilian award, the Congressional Gold Medal, to each of the Little Rock Nine.

 

For more information on Connections 2006 or the convocation lecture, call (435) 797-1194.

 

Contact: Noelle Call (435) 797-1194