Hasan Kwame Jeffries to Deliver 2025 MLK Lecture
January 16 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Noted Civil Rights scholar Hasan Kwame Jeffries will deliver the 2025 MLK Lecture, exploring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s visionary blueprint for justice, peace, and economic equality. The program will also be streamed live.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is too often frozen on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial dreaming about colorblindness.
But his vision for America is far more complex than a handful of reductive sound bites from the famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Dr. King envisioned an America that rejected racism, militarism, and corporate greed, and embraced instead race consciousness, justice, peace, and economic equality.
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries, associate professor of history at The Ohio State University, will deliver the 2025 MLK lecture at the University of Florida titled Where do we go from here? Afrofuturism and Dr. King’s Vision for America.
A leading author and scholar in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Jeffries will explore Dr. King’s vision for America and the blueprint he provided for making it a reality.
Attendees are invited to a free reception immediately following the program in the O’Neill Reading Room on the second floor of Pugh Hall.
The in-person lecture will also be streamed live on YouTube (link to come).
About the Speaker
A Brooklyn native, Hasan Kwame Jeffries graduated summa cum laude from Morehouse College and earned a Ph.D. in African American history from Duke University.
He authored Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt and edited Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement, exploring Black freedom struggles. His forthcoming book, In the Shadow of Civil Rights, examines Black life in New York City post-1977.
Hasan regularly shares his knowledge of African American history and contemporary Black politics with the public through lectures, workshops, op-eds, and radio and television interviews. He has contributed to the National Civil Rights Museum’s renovation, hosts the podcast Teaching Hard History, and consults on anti-racism programs nationwide.
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Lectures Series program is sponsored by the Center for African American Studies, the Bob Graham Center for Public Service, and the College of Liberal Arts and Science, with additional support from the Department of History, the UF Office of Student Engagement, and the Center for Arts, Migration and Entrepreneurship in the College of the Arts.
