The eighth annual Thomas Merton Black History Month Lecture will be presented on Feb. 26 at 7 p.m. in Frazier Hall at Bellarmine University, 2001 Newburg Road. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Dr. Dorothy Cotton worked with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from 1960 until his assassination in 1968. During those years, she served as the education director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and worked with civil rights leaders to direct the Citizenship Education Program. Cotton accompanied King to Norway to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace and was in the room next door to his when he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
Cotton later served as vice president for field operations of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. She also author of “If Your Back’s Not Bent: The Role of the Citizenship Education Program in the Civil Rights Movement.”
