By Kassondra Granata
CCSU will welcome Rev. Arthur Price Jr., a pastor from Birmingham, Ala. on Feb. 9 at 3 pm. in Torp Theatre.
Price will speak on the role of religion and Christianity’s prominent role for African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement.
According to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church website, Rev. Price was brought to Birmingham in January 2002 after serving as senior pastor of the Memorial Baptist Church in Buffalo, N.Y. Rev. Price graduated in 1995 from Colgate Rochester Divinity School where he received the Master of Divinity degree concentrating on biblical studies.
Price has also completed an undergraduate degree study at Temple University in Philadelphia and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminal Justice.
Price was a prosecution assistant for eleven years in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office as well as the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office in Rochester, N. Y.
The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was used as a meeting ground for civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shutterworth during the prime years of the movement.
In December, Chief A.C. Roper spoke at CCSU on the role of police brutality and the civil rights movement, drawing in a very large crowd.
According to Roper, Birmingham still remains the cradle for human rights movements.
“I can say that as of the police department, we still operate under the ‘shadow of doom,’” said Roper. “We have to make sure that we train our officers not to do things that they have done in the past. Our young officers do not really comprehend what the movement is; some of our young people think ‘what is the big deal?’ They do not tie it to the 1960’s during that awful period of time.”
Professor Stephen Balkaran, coordinator of the Civil Rights Movement Lecture Series Program, says that he encourages all to come to the event.
“This was a very important church in the African American community and the civil rights movement,” said Balkaran.
Balkaran and 20 students traveled to the south in the summer of 2010 and met many people who lived the civil rights movement firsthand, including Rev. Price.
“The black church has been the flame bearer of the civil rights movement since the beginning,” said Balkaran in an e-mail. “Christianity has played a prominent role in establishing a moral conscious for the civil rights of blacks in America. Many individual and collective efforts contributed to freedoms we now enjoy as African Americans, but few institutions provided the united voice echoed by that of the black church.”