Figures Leadership Experience Impacts Next Generation of Students

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Ninth-graders from across the state, including the Mobile, Montgomery, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa areas, will be on The University of Alabama and Stillman College campuses next week to learn lessons in leadership.

Stillman College and UA are sponsoring the Michael A. Figures Leadership Experience, scheduled for July 20-23. Students will be housed in residence halls at Stillman and attend seminars at both institutions. The program will conclude with a luncheon on Wednesday, July 23 at the Indian Hills Country Club where Alabama state Sen. Vivian Davis Figures (D-Mobile) and UA President Robert E. Witt will make presentations.

The Michael A. Figures Leadership Experience is named in honor of the late Sen. Michael A. Figures (D-Mobile) and is designed to develop leadership skills in young people who demonstrate the capacity for leadership, but have not yet held leadership roles. Participants are incoming ninth graders who were initially selected by their school counselors before going through an additional interview process.

Sessions include topics such as personal and professional etiquette and dressing for success, negotiation and consensus building, public speaking, career planning and interpersonal relations. One of the highlights of the event is student participation in Moot Court with Judge John England on Monday July 21 from 9:45 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the UA Law School.

Vivian Davis Figures, the widow of Michael A. Figures, will be present during the program to share her late husband’s vision and his 3 B’s: Be prepared; Be there; and Be on time. The late Figures espoused that while some rare individuals may be born leaders, most become leaders through a commitment to personal growth that includes building strength of character, embracing high moral and spiritual values and acquiring knowledge through education.

Figures was a five-term senator who died in Mobile on Sept. 13, 1996 of a brain hemorrhage. The 49-year-old legislative leader was only the third African American to serve in the state senate. Figures was a Mobile attorney and was widely recognized as a skilled debater whose passionate oratory helped him have an extremely successful political career. He worked to involve the African American community in the political process in the aftermath of the Civil Rights era.

In the 1980s, Figures was the attorney in a lawsuit against two Ku Klux Klan members convicted in the 1981 lynching of Michael Donald in Mobile. A jury returned a $7 million judgment that bankrupted the United Klans of America. In 1995, Figures was elected Senate president pro tem in January 1995, which made him the third most powerful man in the state. He was known for his ability to resolve conflict rather than champion it. At the time of his death it was widely thought, both inside the state of Alabama and in Washington, D.C., that Figures had a long and successful political career ahead of him.

Editor’s Note: A final agenda is available to media. Contact Elizabeth Smith.