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DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. COMMEMORATIVE PROGRAM

JANUARY 22, 2013, 11AM

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEWIS

Forrestal Main Auditorium

Simulcast to Germantown Room E301

All employees are invited to the Department’s 2013 commemorative program honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King is known for helping to change the course of history.

Our keynote speaker, Congressman John Lewis, was one of the speakers and planners of the March of Washington in August 1963, the occasion of Dr. King’s celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech.

Congressman Lewis was also one of the founding members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and served as its president from 1963 to 1966, when SNCC was at the forefront of the student movement for civil rights. By 1963, he was recognized as one of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement, along with Dr. King, Whitney Young, A. Phillip Randolph, James Farmer, and Roy Wilkins.

In 1964, Congressman Lewis coordinated SNCC’s efforts for “Mississippi Freedom Summer,” a campaign to register black voters across the South. The following year, he led one of the most dramatic protests of the era. On March 7, 1965 – a day that would become known as “Bloody Sunday” – Congressman Lewis and fellow activist Hosea Williams led over 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. At the end of the bridge, they were met by Alabama State Troopers, who ordered them to disperse. When the marchers stopped to pray, the police discharged tear gas and mounted troopers charged the demonstrators, beating them with night sticks. Congressman Lewis’ skull was fractured, but he escaped across the bridge, to a church in Selma.

Join the Energy Department for this important and educational program as we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – the man whose dream celebrates us all.

This program will be videocast to requesting sites.