By Anthony Howard
The Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University is pleased to announce Leslie-Burl McLemore, Ph.D., founding chair of the JSU Department of Political Science, will keynote the 56th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Convocation on Friday, Jan. 19 at 10 a.m. in the Rose E. McCoy Auditorium.
McLemore is a native of Walls, Mississippi, and a Southern Civil Rights Movement veteran. As a Rust College student, he was the founding president of the college chapter of the NAACP. He organized and led several demonstrations and voter registration drives during his tenure at Rust.
“The opportunity to host Dr. Leslie-Burl McLemore at Jackson State is a perfect tribute to the legacy of those people who fought for access to the rights of American citizenship,” said Robert Luckett, Ph.D., director of the Margaret Walker Center.
In January 1969, Margaret Walker began the MLK Convocation at Jackson State to honor King just nine months after his assassination, making it one of the nation’s oldest celebrations of his life. As the 60th anniversary of 1964’s Freedom Summer approaches, Luckett feels McLemore would be the ideal speaker for the memorial occasion.
“Dr. McLemore’s history of activism, including as a delegate for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in 1964, and his scholarly and political contributions to our community makes him uniquely positioned to keynote our 56th annual MLK Convocation,” Luckett shared.
McLemore was a founding member and elected vice-chair of the MFDP in 1964. He also served as a member of the executive committee. In August of 1964, he was elected as one of the 64 Freedom Party delegates to the Democratic National Convention and worked closely with Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses, Victoria Gray Adams, Annie Devine, Aaron Henry and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi and other parts of the American South.
Currently, a member of the Walls, MS Board of Aldermen, McLemore made history as one of two African Americans elected to the board. He also serves as an advisor to the Office of Alumni Development at Rust College. He is also a member of the National Park Service Roundtable of Scholars.
During his tenure at Jackson State, McLemore served as president in 2010. He was the founding director of JSU’s Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy, the former dean of the graduate school and founding director of JSU’s Office of Research Administration.
McLemore earned his bachelor’s degree in social science and economics from Rust College, his master’s degree in political science from Atlanta University,, and his doctorate in government from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has done post-doctoral work at The Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University.
McLemore is married to Betty A. Mallett, an attorney, and they are the parents of one son, Leslie II, a lawyer in Marietta, Georgia, daughter-in-law, Jacinta W. McLemore, and two granddaughters, Harper Anniece-Diane McLemore, and Harlow-Leslie McLemore.