Project News

It’s often overlooked, but American music is filled with indigenous inspirations, influences, and artistry.

It’s been 51 years since Martin Luther King Jr., the American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights, was assassinated. But since that fateful April 4, 1968 day in Memphis, America has continued to learn from King Jr.’s legacy. Dr. Neal Lester, an Arizona State University English professor, said he believes the holiday should allow people to reflect not only on how far society has come but also to learn from the past.

Arizona State University Professor Neal Lester will be honored in two separate celebrations of Martin Luther King Jr., but he’s more than a little wistful about all the memorials that will be taking place in advance of and on the slain civil rights leader’s birthday Monday.

Arizona State University Professor Neal A. Lester agrees with poet Maya Angelou’s words: “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” But that doesn't mean that he sees no value in our differences. So he challenges people to recognize, celebrate and embrace those differences.

“Mr. Salter’s story is a reminder that unsung heroes for justice are always among us. To put a face and story with the iconic Woolworth’s sit-in photograph, especially someone with an Arizona connection, is refreshing,” said Lester, professor of English and director of Project Humanities.

It is so easy to point out challenges and problems and even point fingers of blame at others as we look around and pay close attention to what’s happening in our world – the disappointments, the disagreements, the fights, the incivility and the intolerance.

Forget everything you thought you knew about drag. “It’s not (about) gender. Drag is everything; whatever you can imagine,” said local Valley drag performer Miss X on Thursday night at an event hosted by ASU’s Project Humanities, an initiative created to bring people together to listen, talk and connect.

“And so it stays just on the edge of vision,/ A small unfocused blur, a standing chill/ That slows each impulse down to indecision./ Most things may never happen: this one will.” So wrote British poet Philip Larkin in his 1980 poem “Aubade.” Though the title evokes the welcoming of a new dawn, the subject of the poem — this thing that is certain to happen to all — is death.

Discarded pizza boxes. Empty energy-drink cans. Dozens dancing. And hundreds of people cracking, hacking and tapping away on laptops during a 36-hour marathon binge.