Civil rights veteran Ozell Sutton is CU Martin Luther King Jr. speaker

Ozell Sutton, a man who has been cited four times by Ebony magazine as among the "100 Most Influential African American Leaders," will deliver the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture at Cornell Monday, Feb. 3.

Sutton

The talk by Sutton, the director of the Community Relations Service of the U.S. Department of Justice in the Southeast region, is free and open to the public. It will be in the Anabel Taylor Hall Chapel at 4:45 p.m. A reception will follow the lecture. Sutton's visit is sponsored by Cornell United Religious Work (CURW).

Since 1972 Sutton has directed the justice department's Community Relations Service (CRS) in the conflict-prone Southeast region. He oversees the department's racial and ethnic conflict prevention and resolution efforts in the region. Prior to 1972 he was state supervisor for CRS in Arkansas.

A dynamic speaker, Sutton is nationally recognized for his leadership in human relations and racial conflict resolution and for his extensive history in the civil rights movement. Born in Gould, Ark., Sutton grew up in Little Rock, where he graduated from Dunbar High School. He was with the Little Rock Nine when they entered Central High School in 1957. He also marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington in 1963, in Selma in 1965, and he was in Memphis when King was killed in 1968.

From 1968 to 1970, Sutton was special assistant to the late Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller of Arkansas. He also has been field representative for CRS throughout the South and director of the Arkansas Council on Human Relations, when he directed three statewide voter registration campaigns as well as sit-ins and desegregation efforts in Little Rock during the '60s. He also was relocation and rehabilitation supervisor for the Little Rock Housing Authority and a staff writer for the Arkansas Democrat newspaper.

Among his many affiliations, Sutton is the past national president of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc.; past president of the National Assault on Illiteracy; past co-chairperson of the Atlanta Black-Jewish Coalition; and a founder and member of the executive board of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The U.S. Department of Justice gave him its Distinguished Service Award in 1994 and has cited him three times for his management of racial crisis situations. He also has won the "Medallion of Freedom" from the NAACP.

In addition to his Feb. 3 King lecture, Sutton will be meeting with students at the Unity Hour weekly meeting at Ujamaa Residential College, and he will give a guest lecture in an Africana studies class.