A Memorial Symposium on Higher Education -The 24 Year-old Odyssey of the Ayers Litigation: In Remembrance of Attorney Isaiah T. Madison The Fannie Lou Hamer Institute @ COFO and The Institute for Social Justice and Race Relations invites you to participate in a symposium established to honor the memory and work of the late Attorney Isaiah T. Madison. He used...Read More

The Fannie Lou Hamer Institute @ COFO and The Institute for Social Justice and Race Relations present The JSU Reading Community Book Talk featuring Meredith Coleman McGee discussing her book: James Meredith: Warrior and the America That Created Him James Meredith is a civil rights icon who took on the U.S. federal government and forced...Read More

Jackson State University, College of Liberal Arts, The Fannie Lou Hamer Institute @ COFO, and The Margaret Walker Center Present Alysia Burton Steele Author of  Delta Jewels: In Search of My Grandmother’s Wisdom The Fannie Lou Hamer Institute @ COFO and the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University will host Alysia Burton Steele on Thursday, November 12,...Read More

The Fannie Lou Hamer Institute @ COFO Presents the 32nd Annual Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Symposium: “Nobody’s Free Until Everybody’s Free”  Policing and Racism in America “Well you might kill me today, but I’m innocent, I’m not guilty, and I will never say I’m guilty.” (Fannie Lou Hamer, Speech at Loop College, 1970). In the 1960’s,...Read More

The College of Liberal Arts, Department of Psychology, Institute for Social Justice and Race Relations, and The Fannie Lou Hamer Institute @ COFO partners to bring this HOT TOPIC Tuesday discussion: Depression, Suicide, and Mental Illness: Breaking the Myths in the Black Community.  Depression, Suicide, and Mental Illness are often seen as myths in the Black community. According...Read More

In response to the continuing denial of the right to vote and the shooting death of local protestor Jimmy Lee Jackson in February, 1965, citizens from Dallas County, Alabama and SNCC and SCLC activists scheduled a protest march from Selma to Montgomery for March 7th. On Sunday, March 7, 1965, as protesters crossed the Edmund...Read More

Join us Tuesday, March 24, 2015, for the second in a three-part series,  Murder, Mayhem, and Lynching: Constructing Race, Class, and Gender in America with Dr. Deborah H. Barnes, Associate Professor of English at Jackson State University.  This event will begin at 6 p.m. at the Fannie Lou Hamer Institute @ COFO located at 1017...Read More

The Institute for Social Justice and Race Relations @ COFO, Jackson State University Department of History & Philosophy, Department of English & Modern Foreign Languages, and Gallery 1 The JSU Reading Community will engage in conversation with Akinyele Umoja, author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement" Akinyele Umoja is...Read More

In the autumn of 1965, sharecroppers Mae Bertha and Matthew Carter enrolled the youngest eight of their thirteen children in the public schools of Drew, Mississippi. Their decision to send the children to the formerly all white schools was in response to a "freedom of choice" plan. The plan was designed by the Drew school...Read More