The symposium, open to all, will be held in Gray Auditorium of Presser Hall from 12:30 – 5 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 30 and from 8:45 – noon on Saturday, Oct. 1. The event is part of Berea College’s Sesquicentennial Celebration during 2005-06 and was organized by the College’s History Department.

Ten scholars in all are scheduled to speak on topics that cover “The Slave Experience and the Aftermath of the Civil War;” “Berea College Heritage,” “Segregation and the South,” “Black Women and the African American Experience,” and “Civil Rights Movement.”

Foner’s talk on “The Significance of Reconstruction on American History” is scheduled on Friday. Carson, whose presentation is titled “Martin Luther King’s Global Vision,” will speak on Saturday’s session.

Other speakers include: John Inscoe, University of Georgia; Jacqueline Burnside and Dwayne Mack of Berea College; W. Fitzhugh Brundage, University of North Carolina and David Goldfield, University of North Carolina, Charlotte; Wilma A. Dunaway, Virginia Tech; Stephanie Shaw, Ohio State University and Cynthia Griggs Fleming, University of Tennessee.

Foner, one of America’s foremost historians, is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia. He is a former president of both the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association. He holds degrees from Columbia University (B.A., Ph.D.) and Oriel College of Oxford University (B.A.).

Among his best-known books are “Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy” (1983); “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877” (1988), winner, among other awards of the Bancroft Prize, Parkman Prize and Los Angeles Times Book Award; “The Story of American Freedom” (1998); and “Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World” (2002).

With Olivia Mahoney, Foner has been curator of two prize-winning exhibitions on American history: “A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln,” and “America’s Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War.” Other contributions to public history have included revision of American history presentations at Disney World and Disneyland, and serving as a consultant to National Parks Service history sites and museums. He has won many awards for both his teaching and scholarship.

Foner serves on the editorial boards of “Past and Present” and “The Nation.” He has written for the “New York Times,” “Washington Post,” “Lost Angeles Time” and many other publications, appeared numerous times on television and radio shows and in historical documentaries on PBS and the History Channel.

Carson has been a member of Stanford’s faculty since 1975. He also has taught as a visiting professor at American University, the University of California at Berkeley and Emory University. He earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from UCLA.

His scholarly publications have focused on African-American protest movements and political thought of the period after World War II, and have appeared in leading historical journals, encyclopedia and popular periodicals. His books include “In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s” (1981), winner of the American Historians’ Frederick Jackson Turner Award; and “Malcolm X: The FBI File” (1991). He is co-author of “African American Lives: The Struggle for Freedom,” published in 2005.

Carson served as senior advisor for the 14-part, award-winning public television series “Eyes on the Prize,” and co-edited the “Eyes on the Prize Reader” (1990), and has been historical advisor for several other productions.

ince 1985, Carson has directed the long-term project of editing and publishing the papers of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. To date, five volumes of a projected 14-voume comprehensive edition of King’s speeches, sermons, correspondence and other writings have been produced. Carson also has written or co-edited numerous other works based on the papers. His docudrama “Passages of Martin Luther King” had its premier at Stanford University in 1993. More recently, he collaborated with Roma Design Group of San Francisco to create the winning proposal in an international competition to design a national King memorial in Washington, D.C. For more, visit www.stanford.edu/

A complete schedule for the symposium can be found here (word document).

Berea, the South’s first interracial and coeducational college, focuses on learning, labor, and service. Berea charges no tuition, admitting only academically promising students, primarily from Appalachia, who have limited economic resources. All students must work 10 hours weekly, earning money for books, room and board. Graduates from Berea go on to distinguish themselves and the College in many fields, living out the College's motto "God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth."