AUGUSTA, Ga. – Dr. Lewis V. Baldwin, a historian and author who specializes in the history of black churches, will be the guest speaker at an annual celebration service in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The event, hosted by Augusta Technical College, Georgia Regents University and Paine College, will be at noon Friday, Jan. 18, at GRU’s Maxwell Performing Arts Theatre. The public is welcome.
Baldwin, a native of Camden, Ala., participated in civil rights demonstrations as a student in Wilcox County public schools, the heart of the so-called Alabama blackbelt, and at Talladega College in Talladega, Ala.
He has co-authored or authored seven books on Dr. King, including There is a Balm in Gilead: The Cultural Roots of Martin Luther King, Jr., which received the Midwest Independent Publishers Association’s Best All-Around Book and Midwest Book Achievement awards in 1992. He also recently edited and introduced two volumes of King documents as part of the Beacon Press’s King Legacy Series.
Baldwin has a master of art degree in black church studies, a master of divinity in theology and a doctoral degree in American Christianity. Baldwin was ordained in 1978 and has preached and appeared on radio and television programs throughout the country and is currently a professor of religious studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. He was inducted into Morehouse College’s Martin Luther King Jr. International Collegium of Scholars in 2004.
In addition to remarks by Baldwin, the service will feature performances by choruses from GRU and Paine. The Jaguar Express bus will make two runs between the Health Sciences and Summerville campuses, with pick-ups at 11:15 and 11:45 on Laney Walker Boulevard, in front of the old dental school. Another shuttle will pick riders up from the Health Sciences Campus, Annex 1, North Entrance at 11:30 a.m.
For more information, call Felicia Smalls in the GRU Office of the Provost, 706-721-4014.