ATTENTION: City Desks, Photo Desks

16 May 2002
Contact: Carol Hyman, Media Relations
(510) 643-7944

WHAT:
Exactly 35 years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke on the steps of the University of California, Berkeley's Sproul Hall, UC Berkeley students will be presented with a photograph of his visit to campus by the Department of African American Studies.

WHEN:
10 a.m., Friday, May 17.

WHERE:
UC Berkeley's Martin Luther King, Jr. Student Union, second floor, just outside Pauley Ballroom. The student union is at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph avenues, adjacent to Sproul Plaza.

WHO:
*Charles Henry, chair of the Department of African American Studies, who will present the photograph of King speaking on the steps of Sproul Hall.

*Wally Adeyemo, president of the UC Berkeley division of Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC), who will receive the 24-by-36-inch black-and-white framed photograph.

*Helen Nestor, who took the original photograph of King at UC Berkeley.

*Ronald Stevenson, director of Break the Cycle, a UC Berkeley mentoring program. In the mid-1980s, as a UC Berkeley undergraduate, he organized students to rename the student union after King.

BACKGROUND:
On May 17, 1967, King was on campus as part of a tour to speak out against the war in Vietnam. In his remarks, he told students: "You in a real sense have been the conscience of the academic community and our nation."

Previously, the only image of King in the student union has been a rendering on cardboard tacked to a bulletin board. When Free Speech Movement Café curator Harold Adler saw this, he knew he needed to do something. He had co-curated a book and exhibit about the social protest movements in the '60s and '70s and had a copy of Nestor's photograph. He showed it to Henry, who arranged to have the African-American Studies department buy a copy to present to students. Adler also will be at the event.