‘Moving Beyond the Edmund Pettus Bridge’; Speaker to Voice Self-Help Message at UA

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The founder of a national organization that advocates grassroots efforts to solve societal problems will discuss the group’s campaign to encourage self-help and community empowerment in Lowndes County, Ala., in a 4 p.m. Feb. 6 talk at The University of Alabama.

Robert L. Woodson Sr., president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, will give a talk entitled “Applying Old Values to New Vision: Moving Beyond the Edmund Pettus Bridge,” in UA’s ten Hoor Hall, room 125.

A recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, Woodson is a proponent of strategies of self-help and empowerment. He is frequently featured as a social commentator in both print and electronic media. He has authored numerous books on such subjects as family dissolution, community revitalization, youth violence, and substance abuse.

Lowndes County is located in the south-central Alabama region known as the Black Belt, an impoverished area named for its rich, dark soil. In an adjoining county in 1965, law enforcement officers attacked hundreds of marchers on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. The marchers were protesting racist voting laws.

Sponsors of Woodson’s talk include UA’s College of Arts and Sciences diversity committee, the department of history, the department of philosophy, the department of American studies, New College, the School of Social Work, and the Alabama Scholars Association.