Contact: Sammy McDavid
Rep. Chip Pickering and civil rights leader Harry Nash Sykes will be among featured speakers Monday [Jan. 19] for the 14th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Breakfast.
The public program begins at 7:30 a.m. in the Bost Extension Center auditorium at Mississippi State. The university and the Greater Starkville Development Partnership are sponsors.
Pickering, Republican congressman from Mississippi's 3rd District since 1996, will provide opening remarks. In the U.S. House of Representatives, he serves on the Agriculture and Energy and Commerce committees.
Sykes, born in Starkville in 1927, is a former member of the Harlem Globetrotters national exhibition basketball team who went on to become the first African-American on the Lexington, Ky., city council. A graduate of Kentucky State University and the University of Minnesota, he also is the founder of the Lexington-Fayette County Urban League and the recipient of numerous public service awards and honors.
Among others on the early morning campus program will be MSU President Charles Lee, Dean of Libraries Frances N. Coleman, Oktibbeha County Chancery Clerk Monica Banks, and William "Brother" Rogers, assistant director for the Starkville-based John C. Stennis Center for Public Service.
For additional information on the free event, contact Carson C. Cook, MSU director of diversity and equity programs. He may be reached at (662) 325-2493 or ccook@aaeo.msstate.edu.