Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A prominent Washington, D.C., attorney who once helped organize Harvard University students to work for Mississippi civil rights during the 1964 Freedom Summer Project will speak Jan. 21 at Mississippi State.
Gregory B. Craig, partner in the Williams & Connolly LLP law firm, is featured speaker for the university's 2008 Martin Luther King Jr. Day Unity Breakfast.
Open to all, the land-grant institution's 14th annual participation in the national observance of the U.S. civil rights leader's birthday begins with the meal at 7:15 a.m., followed by the formal program at 8. Both will take place in the renovated ballroom of the extensively renovated and newly reopened Colvard Student Union.
The offices of MSU President Robert H. "Doc" Foglesong and Diversity and Equity Programs are sponsors.
Starkville Mayor Dan Camp will join Craig and Foglesong on the program. The student Black Voices Gospel Choir also will perform.
Prior to helping organize Harvard students to come south, Craig participated in the 1963 March on Washington to urge a greater federal role in guaranteeing civil rights for African-Americans. He was among a group standing close to the podium at the Lincoln Memorial when King delivered his landmark "I Have a Dream" speech that defined the movement.
In addition to working with Harvard students coming south, Craig traveled to Jackson and Batesville during Freedom Summer. After his 1965 sophomore year, Craig returned to Mississippi, where he assisted state civil rights leader Aaron Henry in increasing black voter registration in Coahoma and, later, Leflore and Washington counties.
In the late 1960s, he taught high school dropouts as part of the Harlem Street Academy Project sponsored by the Urban League of Greater New York.
As a career attorney, Craig has been involved in a number of high-profile criminal and civil proceedings. One of the highest came in 2000 when he successfully represented Juan M. Gonzalez, the Havana, Cuba, resident who sought to regain custody of his son Elian, then living with family members in Miami.
Prior to representing Gonzalez and other private clients, the Yale University Law School graduate held several positions in the Clinton administration. In 1997, Secretary of State Madeline Albright appointed him as one of her senior advisers and director of policy planning.
In 1998, President Clinton named Craig as a White House assistant and special counsel. There, he quarterbacked the team assembled to defend the nation's 42nd chief executive against impeachment.
For additional information, contact the Office of Diversity and Equity Programs at 662-325-0216.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.