Visiting Scholars

Oliver L. Brown Distinguished Visiting Scholar for Diversity Issues

Beginning in 1999, The Brown Foundation, in conjunction with The College of Arts and Sciences at Washburn University, has annually sponsored the Oliver L. Brown Distinguished Visiting Scholar for Diversity Issues.

Previous Visiting Scholars include:

2015 - Congressman John Lewis - Lecturing about his latest project, a three-part book series for young readers entitled March
2014 - Dr. Steve Brown, Playwright & Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at Texas A & M University – Corpus Christi, featuring his play: Brown a Conversation between Thurgood Marshall and Earl Warren.
2013 - Madison Davis Lacy, four-time Emmy award winner and writer, producer, and director of documentary films, featuring his film Eyes on the Price - Back to the Movement.
2012 - Stogie Kenyatta, renowned actor, writer and comedian - performed his one man show: The World is My Home: The Life of Paul Robeson
2011 - Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post correspondent and Kevin Merida, Washington Post national editor
2010 - Gary R. Grant, Executive Director of the Concerned Citizens of Tillery
2009 - Gerald Torres, Author and Professor at the University of Texas Law School
2008 - Tim Wise, renowned Author and Lecturer
2007 - Madison Davis Lacy, Emmy Award-winning filmaker and programming executive (September 21-23)
2006 - Donald Bogle, Turner Classics Film Commentator and Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and New York University
2005 - Lewis W. Diuguid, Vice President for Community Resources and Columnist at the Kansas City Star
2004 - Theodore Shaw, Director-Counsel NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (November 8-9)
2003 - Dr. Robert Schrirer, University of Capetown, South Africa
2002 - Reverend Charles R. Stith, former ambassador to Tanzania.
2001 - Dr. Zvonimir Radeljkovic, Professor of American and English Literature, Sarajevo University.
2000 - Dr. Grace Sawyer Jones, President, College of Eastern Utah.
1999 - Dr. John Slaughter, Retired President, Occidental College.

Spotlight on Visiting Scholar - Gary R. Grant

We Shall Not Be Moved | September 12, 2010

Film and discussion with Gary R. Grant, Executive Director of the Concerned Citizens of Tillery

2010 Washburn University Oliver L. Brown Distinguished Visiting Scholar for Diversity Issues
Program co-sponsored by Washburn University

We Shall Not Be Moved is a film about Tillery, North Carolina, which had its beginnings in the slavery of the old South. During the 1930s, the Resettlement Administration of the New Deal gave landless sharecroppers the opportunity to buy their own farms. Roanoke Farms in Tillery was one of only a handful of resettlement projects for African Americans. Its families have overcome the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow to earn their part of the American Dream. They and their successors continue to battle racism, assaults on their environment by agribusiness conglomerates, farm foreclosures, and natural disasters.

Gary R. Grant is the 2010 Washburn University Oliver L. Brown Distinguished Visiting Scholar for Diversity Issues. Mr. Grant was reared on a family farm in the New Deal Community of Tillery Resettlement Farms. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from North Carolina College at Durham (now North Carolina Central University) and an Honorary Doctor of Humanities from Eastern North Carolina Theological Institute.

He is the Executive Director of the Concerned Citizens of Tillery (CCT). Formed in the 1990s in response to a proposed hog farm in the area, the CCT has grown to be a community organization with deep roots in the community it serves. The CCT’s purpose now is to promote and improve the social, economic and educational welfare of the citizens in the surrounding community through the self-development of its members.

Photo courtesy of Bernarda Bryson Shahn, Depression Era Prints at the James A. Michener Art Museum, PA.