A Community-wide Sing Along and Stories from the Civil Rights Movement with Hollis Watkins

Monday, January 16
2:00-4:00 p.m.
at Friends School of Minnesota

 See our blog post and photos from this 2012 event

Co-sponsored by Friends School of Minnesota and Southside Family Charter School with the collaboration and support of Hamline University's Conflict Studies program. 

event flyer (pdf)

Please join us for this community event.

Hollis Watkins continues the musical traditions of the civil rights movement in the struggle of today. Having been sustained by music when he was hanging from handcuffs in a cell in Parchman prison in the  60's, Hollis includes the musical traditions of the civil rights movement into the struggle of today, making it part of his organizing and bringing its message to a new generation of activists.

Hollis Watkins is the founder and president of Southern Echo, Inc., a leadership development, education, training, and technical assistance organization dedicated to empowering local residents throughout Mississippi and the Southern region to make political, economic, educational, and environmental systems accountable to the needs and interests of the African-American community.

The twelfth child born to sharecroppers in Lincoln County, Mississippi, Hollis has spent a lifetime in pursuit of racia l justice in his home state. He was nineteen when he became the first Mississippi student to join the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as a voting rights organizer. Almost immediately, he learned of the danger to those who resist entrenched and unprincipled power. During the years that he worked as an organizer for SNCC, he was repeatedly arrested and jailed. Later he served as the director of the Organic and Sustainable Agriculture Program of the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives before founding Southern Echo in 1990. www.southernecho.org

Monday, January 16, 2012
2:00-4:00 p.m.
at Friends School of Minnesota

Everyone is welcome to this community event at Friends School of Minnesota which is located at:

1365 Englewood Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55104
651-917-0636

This event is co-sponsored by Friends School of Minnesota and Southside Family Charter School with the collaboration and support of Hamline University's Conflict Studies program.