The acting chairman for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Jon Peede, will be visiting Hinds Community College’s Utica Campus for a celebration of the legacy of founder William H. Holtzclaw.

The program is at 9 a.m. Friday Dec. 8 in the Walter Washington amphitheater on the Utica Campus.

The celebration will focus on Holtzclaw’s contributions to African American education. The historic Utica Jubilee Singers will present several selections, and there will also be presentations of research projects and an overview of humanities activities at the Utica Campus.

Peede, who grew up in Brandon and now lives in Virginia, is expected to make brief remarks.

Program Overview:

9:00        Welcome
Performance by the Jubilee Singers
Overview of Grant activities
Student research presentations
Faculty research presentations

9:45        Reception in future Holtzclaw Museum space

10:10     Campus tour for guests on Hinds bus

He holds degrees from Vanderbilt University and the University of Mississippi. He was formerly director of communications at Millsaps College and was the founding editor of Millsaps Magazine. He has served on the national council of the Margaret Walker Center for the Study of the African-American Experience at Jackson State University and was on the poet laureate selection committee for the state of Mississippi, office of the governor.

The Humanities Department at Hinds’ Utica Campus received a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund a project called “The Black Man’s Burden: William H. Holtzclaw and the Mississippi HBCU Connection” to explore the legacy of William H. Holtzclaw. The project’s goal is to contribute to a growing body of research and interest in the “Little Tuskegees” as important forerunners of the Civil Rights Era in the Deep South.

The grant allows for a two-year research program designed to equip faculty and student-scholars to explore themes in Holtzclaw’s writing in humanities courses, a Summer Teachers’ Institute and teaching resource kits.

The project’s Holtzclaw Lecture Series has also brought nationally recognized scholars and experts on African American education in the South for public lectures in a variety of venues around the state in cooperation with the Mississippi Humanities Council.