2025 Benjamin E. Mays Lecture
Mays Lecture 2025 Theme: Education as Liberation
Panel Discussion with Gloria Swindler Boutte and Marvin Dunn
Feb. 20, 2025
4:30 p.m. Reception | 5:30 p.m. Lecture | 7:30 p.m. Book Signing
Georgia State University’s Centennial Hall
100 Auburn Ave. NE, Atlanta
Joyce King, the Benjamin E. Mays Endowed Chair of Teaching, Learning and Leadership, will moderate a conversation between the lecture’s two featured speakers: Gloria Swindler Boutte, a Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina, and Marvin Dunn, founder and president of the Miami Center for Racial Justice.
The lecture will focus on the theme, “Education as Liberation.” This event will:
- Celebrate the essential role of education in shaping our understanding of freedom
- Engage in critical conversations about education’s impact
- Examine the historical, political and cultural functions of education
- Highlight education’s role in the freedom and justice journey for African Americans
PROJECT PARTNERS
Southern Education Foundation
Southern Education Foundation, founded in 1867, advances equity in education for low-income students & students of color in the South through research, policy, & leadership programs.
Gloria Swindler Boutte is a Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina whose scholarship focuses on equity pedagogies. She is the author/editor of eight books:
- “Pro-Blackness in Early Childhood Education: Diversifying Curriculum and Pedagogy in K-3 Classrooms”
- “Revolutionary Love for Early Childhood Classrooms: Nurturing the Brilliance of Young Black Children”
- “Educating African American Students: And How are the Children” (1st and 2nd editions)
- “We Be Lovin’ Black Children: Becoming Learning to Be Literate About the African Diaspora” (2022 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award winner)
- “African Diaspora Literacy: The Heart of Transformation in K-12 Schools and Teacher Education” (2019 AESA Critics Choice Award winner)
- “Resounding Voices: School Experiences of People from Diverse Ethnic Backgrounds”
- “Multicultural Education: Raising Consciousness.”
Boutte has nearly 100 publications and has presented nationally and internationally on equity issues. She has received several prestigious awards for her work, including the 2020 National Council of Teachers of English Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts – Elementary Section and the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) 2021 Division K Legacy Award. She is a Fulbright Scholar, a Fulbright Specialist and an AERA Fellow. Boutte is the founder and executive director of the Center for the Education and Equity of African American Students and has served as a visiting scholar.
Marvin Dunn is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Florida International University where he retired as department chair in 2006. He has published numerous articles on race and ethnic relations in several publications, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Orlando Sentinel and the Miami Herald. Dunn served his country and retired as a naval officer.
He authored “The History of Florida: Through Black Eyes” and “Black Miami in the Twentieth Century,” and he co-authored “This Land is Our Land” and “The Miami Riot of 1980: Crossing the Bounds.” In his career, he has produced four documentary films, including “Rosewood Uncovered,” documenting the Rosewood Massacre of 1923; “Murder on the Suwanee: The Willie James Howard Story,” the story of a 15-year-old black child who was lynched in Live Oak, Fla., in 1944; “Black Seminoles in the Bahamas: The Red Bays story,” which documents slaves’ flight from Florida to the Bahamas in the 1800s; and “The Black Miami,” which is based on his book, “Black Miami in the Twentieth Century.”
Dunn and other community advocates for racial justice founded the Miami Center for Racial Justice in 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd. He has been awarded a Mellon Foundation grant for the Teach Truth Tours program, allowing the center to continue historic activist scholarship and training for Florida educators.
Graduate students are invited to attend two virtual fireside chats with this year’s Mays Lecture speakers.
Fireside Chat with Gloria Swindler Boutte
Friday, Feb. 21, from 1-3 p.m.
Virtual Format
Fireside Chat with Marvin Dunn
Wednesday, Feb. 26, at 4:30 p.m.
Virtual Format
In the spring of 1988, the Benjamin E. Mays Chair of Urban Educational Leadership was approved by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia and established in the College of Education & Human Development at Georgia State University.
Its goal was and continues to be the improvement of the quality of educational institutions in urban areas of the country, with special emphasis on the problems faced by the leadership of large city school districts.
The founding holder of the Chair, Dr. Alonzo A. Crim, organization and sponsorship of the annual Benjamin E. Mays Memorial Lecture Series. It began in 1989 with Dr. Charles V. Willie, a social scholar at Harvard University, and has continued to past year’s lecturer, Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond.
By continuing to bring nationally prominent educators to Atlanta, each symposium, conference and lecture encourages the discussion of issues facing urban educational leaders.
This program honors the memory of Dr. Benjamin E. Mays and promotes his philosophy of educational excellence for those typically least served by society.
Benjamin E. Mays Lecture
Georgia State University’s Centennial Hall (100 Auburn Ave. NE, Atlanta, GA 30303)
Parking
Parking is available at Georgia State University’s T Deck, located at 43 Auburn Ave. NE, Atlanta, GA 30303. The cost for parking is $10. Additional details about parking can be found at https://parking.gsu.edu.
For guests who plan to travel via MARTA to this event, the Peachtree Center Station on the North/South MARTA rail line is a couple of blocks away. There is also limited off-street metered parking available near Georgia State’s Centennial Hall.
Driving Directions and Directions from MARTA
Directions from MARTA
Take the Gold/Red MARTA rail line to the Peachtree Center transit station and exit the station on the Peachtree Center Transit Station side. Proceed south on Peachtree St. (toward Forsyth St.) and turn left onto John Wesley Dobbs Ave. Then, turn right onto Courtland St. Centennial Hall is on the left-hand side of the street.
Driving Directions
From North: From I-75/85, take the Courtland St. exit, Exit 249A, towards Georgia State University. Drive half a mile and turn right onto Auburn Ave. Go through one traffic light and the entrance to T Deck will be on the left.
From South: From I-75/85, take the Edgewood Ave. exit, Exit 248B, towards Auburn Ave. / John Wesley Dobbs Ave. Take a left onto Edgewood Ave., drive about half a mile and take a right onto Peachtree Center Ave. Then, take a left at the next light onto Auburn Ave. and the entrance to T Deck will be on the left.
From East: From I-20, take exit 58A for Capitol Ave./Exit 58A/Capitol Ave. Downtown toward downtown. Use the right two lanes to turn right onto Capitol Ave. Continue onto Piedmont Ave. and turn left onto Decatur St. Turn right onto Peachtree Center Ave. and then take the first left onto Auburn Ave. The entrance to T Deck will be on the left.
From West: From I-20, use the two right lanes to take Exit 56B for Windsor St. toward Ted Turner Dr./State Farm Arena. Take a left onto Central Ave. Continue onto Peachtree Center Ave. and turn left onto Auburn Ave. The entrance to T Deck will be on the left.
Upon exiting T Deck on Auburn Ave., proceed east on Auburn Ave. toward Peachtree Center Ave. Cross over Peachtree Center Ave. and continue on Auburn Ave. Centennial Hall will be on the left-hand side of the street (at the intersection of Auburn Ave. and Courtland St.).
List of Guest Lecturers for The Benjamin E. Mays Memorial Lecture Series — Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence
1989, Charles Willie, Social Scholar, Harvard University
1990, Samuel Cook, President, Dilliard University
1991, Samuel Proctor, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University
1992, Julius S. Scott, President, Paine College
1993, Lerone Bennett Jr., Executive Editor, Ebony Magazine
1994, Maynard H. Jackson, Mayor Emeritus of Atlanta
1995, Lisa Delpit, Benjamin Mays Chair for Urban Educational Leadership, Georgia State University
1996, Barbara Sizemore, Dean, College of Education, DePaul University
1997, Asa G. Hilliard, Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Urban Education, Georgia State University
1998, Robert Franklin, President, Interdenominational Theological Center
1999, Jackie Jordan-Irvine, Charles Chandler, Professor of Urban Education, Emory University
2000, Vincent Harding, Professor Illif College
2001, Johnetta Cole, President, Spelman College
2002, Beverly Tatum, President, Spelman College
2003, Gloria Ladson Billings, Professor, University of Wisconsin
2004, Joyce King, Benjamin Mays Chair for Urban Education, Georgia State University
2005, Beverly Hall, Superintendent, Atlanta Public Schools
2006, Ronald Ferguson, Economist, Harvard University
2007, Mark Alexander, Endocrinologist, Kaiser Permanente
2008, Marian Wright Edelman, Founder and President of the Children’s Defense Fund
2009, Robert Moses, Founder of the Algebra Project
2010, Ela Gandhi, Durban University of Technology
2011, Vanessa Siddle Walker, Emory University
2012, Adelaide Sanford, Former Vice-Chancellor New York State Board of Regents
2013, Brian Stevenson, Equal Justice Initiative
2014, Jeannie Oakes, Professor Emerita, UCLA, AERA President-Elect
2015, Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts Amherst
2017, Noma LeMoine, Chief Editorial Officer, LeMoine and Associates Educational Consulting
2018, Leslie T. Fenwick, Professor Emerita, Howard University
2019, Walter C. Farrell, Jr., University of Colorado-Boulder
2020, Linda Darling-Hammond, Learning Policy Institute
2021, Molefi Kete Asante, Professor and Chair, Temple University’s Department of African American Studies
2022, William F. Tate, President, Louisiana State University
2023, Na’ilah Suad Nasir, Spencer Foundation
2024, Ruha Benjamin, Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University
Benjamin E. Mays Chair of Urban Educational Leadership, Dr. Joyce E. King
Joyce E. King holds the Benjamin E. Mays Endowed Chair of Teaching, Learning and Leadership at George State University. She is a professor of Educational Policy Studies and is an affiliated faculty member in the Department of African-American Studies.
Her research and scholarship discuss how mainstream American education produces dysconsciousness that resists a critically transformative understanding of race and racialized inequity. Education kindergarten through grade 16 perpetuates a curriculum that alienates peoples of color from seeing themselves as collaborative levels of knowledge and distorts White people’s humanity, as well.
Dr. King’s research notes that kindergarten through 12th-grade textbooks, lesson plans and teacher preparation routinely start the history of Black people in slavery, not in Africa, and teach that Egypt is located in the Middle East or even Asia rather than in Africa!
African American learners are taught they have contributed nothing to the production of knowledge, and that abandonment of all Black cultural identity is key to any success in school.
Her scholarship addresses a transformative role for culture in effective teaching and teacher preparation, Black Studies epistemology and curriculum theorizing, community-mediated research and dysconscious racism, a term she coined. Her scholarship emphasizes cultural well-being as a necessary goal in all successful education, including that of Whites who are miseducated, as well, by a competitive educational system that feeds them racially-constructed knowledge as color-blind education.
Her publications can be found in the Harvard Educational Review, The Journal of Negro Education, The Journal of Black Studies, Womanist Theory and Research, numerous book chapters as well as six books: Teaching Diverse Populations; Black Mothers to Sons: Juxtaposing African American Literature with Social Praxis; Preparing Teachers for Diversity and Black Education: A Transformative Research and Action Agenda for the New Century; Remembering History in Student and Teacher Learning: An African-centered Culturally Informed Praxis; and Dysconscious Racism, Afrocentric Praxis and Education for Human Freedom—Through the Years I Keep on Toiling—The Selected Works of Joyce E. King.
Previously, Dr. King has also served as Provost and Professor of Education at Spelman College, Associate Provost at Medgar Evers College in New York (CUNY), Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Diversity Programs at the University of New Orleans; Director of Teacher Education at Santa Clara University, and Head of the Department of Ethnic Studies, Mills College. Dr. King has international experience teaching, lecturing and providing professional development in Brazil (using Portuguese translations of her publications), Canada, China, England, Jamaica, New Zealand, Mali, Kenya, and Senegal. A recipient of the W.K. Kellogg Fellowship and the American Council on Education Fellowship, she also served on the California State Board of Education Curriculum Commission.
She holds the Ph.D. in the Social Foundations of Education and a B.A. Degree (with Honors), both from Stanford University, and a Certificate in Educational Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr. King is the immediate past-President of the American Educational Research Association (2014-2015).
Book Signing
Mays Lecture featured speakers Gloria Swindler Boutte and Marvin Dunn will be available immediately following the lecture to sign copies of their books.
Books by Gloria Swindler Boutte
- “Educating African American Students: And How are the Children”
- “Pro-Blackness in Early Childhood Education: Diversifying Curriculum and Pedagogy in K-3 Classrooms”
- “Revolutionary Love for Early Childhood Classrooms: Nurturing the Brilliance of Young Black Children”
- “We Be Lovin’ Black Children: Becoming Learning to Be Literate About the African Diaspora”
Books by Marvin Dunn
- “The History of Florida: Through Black Eyes”
- “Black Miami in the Twentieth Century”
Contact Us
Office Location
College of Education & Human Development
3rd floor
Tel: 404-413-8070
Email: [email protected]
Office Hours
Monday-Friday,
8:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m.
Mailing Address
College of Education & Human Development
P.O. Box 3976
Atlanta, GA 30302-3976