Coastal Carolina University will celebrate the 2015 "Ella Baker Day" on Wednesday, April 15, with poster presentations on Prince Lawn in the afternoon and speakers in the evening. The event is free and open to the public.

Baker is known as the mother of the civil rights movement and worked with notable organizations such as SNCC, NAACP, and SCLC.  This event not only draws attention to Baker but to the value of community organizing and the roles that women and people of color having played in resisting oppression and in helping build this nation. The theme of this year's symposium is environmental racism, which is a concept used to identify to how communities of color disproportionately experience the negative consequences of environmental hazards such as waste facilities, toxic air and water, and natural disasters.

Students from Sociology 355: Race and Ethnic Relations will present posters on environmental racism on Prince Lawn from 1 to 3 p.m. (rain location: Student Union).

Keynote speaker Glenn Johnson will speak at 7 p.m. in the Edwards Recital Hall. Johnson is a nationally known environmental activist who focuses on environmental racism.

He earned bachelor's degrees in academic psychology and sociology from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and earned a doctorate in sociology from the University of Tennessee. Johnson is the associate dean for research and graduate studies at the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University. He was a research associate in the Environmental Justice Resource Center and an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Clark Atlanta University.  

Following Johnson's presentation, there will be brief presentations by activists Debbie Perkins of the CCU Social Justice Research Initiative and two organizers from the North Charleston Low Country Alliance for Model Communities: Herb Fraser-Rahim and Ernest "Omar" Muhammad.  

            Prince Lawn is located in front of the Prince Building at 100 Tom Trout Drive.  Edwards Recital Hall is located in the Thomas W. and Robin W. Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts, Room 152.

For more information, contact Hephzibah V. Strmic-Pawl, assistant professor of sociology at 843-234-3489 or visit www.supportellabakerday.com