RADFORD  -- Radford University will celebrate the life and contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Tuesday, January 22. The university will welcome journalist, activist and political analyst Bakari Kitwana to campus to deliver the keynote address “Dr. Martin Luther King’s Legacy and the Hip-Hop Generation” in the Bonnie Auditorium at 7 p.m.

RU’s Martin Luther King Day Celebration is an annual event. For the second consecutive year, RU will cancel classes and close the university for the federal and state holiday in honor of Dr. King on Monday, January 21.

Kitwana will highlight the evening of celebration. He has appeared on CNN, Fox News (the O’Reilly Factor), C-Span, PBS (The Tavis Smiley Show), and heard on NPR. He is author of The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture (Basic Civitas Books), a 2002 book focused on young Blacks born after the Civil Rights Movement, which has been adapted for classroom use at over 100 colleges.  In his 2005 book Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop (Basic Books), Kitwana makes the case that there is a new reality of race.

“The younger generations of Americans (generation X and the millennium generation) who have lived their entire lives in post-segregation United States are processing race in radically different ways from their parents,” Kitwana explains. “And they are beginning to set forth a new racial politics that departs from the old divide and conquer essentialism that has heretofore dominated race relations.” 

Kitwana is the executive director of Rap Sessions: Community Dialogues on Hip-Hop, which tours the U.S. conducting difficult dialogues facing the hip-hop generation. He has been the editorial director of Third World Press and executive editor of The Source, the nation’s top-selling music magazine. He is co-founder of the first ever National Hip-Hop Political Convention, which brought over 4,000 young people to Newark, N.J. in 2004 to create and endorse a political agenda for the hip-hop generation. Kitwana is a consultant to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and visiting scholar at Kent State University where he teaches the course “The Politics of the Hip-Hop Generation.” A native of Long Island, N.Y., he holds a B.A. and two master’s degrees in English and teaching from the University of Rochester.

The event is free and open to everyone. Tickets are available at the Bonnie Student Center Information Desk.

The Office of Multicultural and International Student Services, NAACP, Black Student Affairs Council and Men of Standards is sponsoring the event. To learn more, please call (540) 831- 5765 or e-mail diverse@radford.edu