The 11th Annual Walter Rodney Symposium will be held on March 21, 2:00-7:30 p.m., and March 22, noon-6:00 p.m., at the AUC Woodruff Library. The two-day symposium is free and open to the public. The library is located at 111 James P. Brawley Drive SW, Atlanta, Georgia, 30314.

The symposium theme “Africa: The Gateway” will explore economic development, policies, governance, relationships, social justice, and the arts as they relate to the continent. The keynote address, “Deconstructing the African Gateway Concept” will be given on Friday by Dr. Shelby F. Lewis, professor emeritus of at Clark Atlanta University and executive director of the Lewis Foundation. Dr. Robert Hill, professor emeritus of history at UCLA, will be the distinguished guest lecturer on Saturday speaking on “Walter Rodney as I Knew Him.” Cultural presentations will be made by international hip hop artists Bocaflora, Native Sun, Black Noise, Keur Gui, and Ras Kofi. For a complete list of speakers and presentations, visit www.walterrodneyfoundation.org.

The symposium honors the work of Dr. Walter Rodney (1942-1980), Pan-Africanist historian, educator and political activist widely known for his seminal work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Originally published in 1972, the text has been translated into Portuguese, German and Japanese, and is widely used for coursework in colleges and universities worldwide. Rodney authored nine books and more than 50 articles, including: The Groundings with My Brothers (c.1969); A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545 to 1980 (c.1970) and History of the Guyanese Working People 1881-1905 (c.1981). The first Walter Rodney Symposium was held in 2004 to celebrate the donation of Walter Rodney’s personal papers by the Rodney family to the AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library. The papers are available for research in the library’s Archives Research Center. Visit www.auctr.edu/archives for more information.

The Walter Rodney Symposium is hosted by the Walter Rodney Foundation and the AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library in collaboration with the Africa Atlanta 2014, African American Human Rights Foundation, Clark Atlanta University Department of Political Science, African and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University, Morehouse College Africa Awareness Week, and the Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman College. For more information, contact Karen Jefferson at [email protected].