Executive Director of the New Jersey Amistad Commission to Give Princeton Seminary’s Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture

Princeton, NJ, March 12, 2007–Dr. Karen Jackson-Weaver, executive director of the New Jersey Amistad Commission, will give the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary on Wednesday, April 4 at 7:30 p.m. in the Main Lounge of the Mackay Campus Center. Her lecture is titled “Unfulfilled Dreams: A Socio-historic Analysis of Dr. King’s Leadership and the Women Who Shaped It.”

Jackson-Weaver is a scholar and lay minister with research interests in African American religious history. She has been a Fellow at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University and a visiting scholar at the King Center Library and Archives in Atlanta, Georgia, where she completed research for her dissertation, “Lift Every Voice: Black Women’s Invisible Leadership and Faith during the Civil Rights Era.” She is a former editor of the journal Souls: A Critical Journey of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, and a former editorial board member of the Columbia Historical Review. She has taught at Columbia University and served as faculty at Princeton Seminary’s Institute for Youth Ministry, and was an Engle Scholar in 2005.

Under Jackson-Weaver’s administration, the New Jersey Amistad Commission has been featured on CNN News and CBS News, and in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Black Enterprise, Newsweek, and Forbes, for its innovative approach to integrating African American history into the social studies curriculum in New Jersey’s public schools.   

Jackson-Weaver has spoken to a wide range of civic groups and educational organizations about the rich history of people of the African Diaspora and their significant contributions to American society.

Her most recent writings were featured in The African American Pulpit, a quarterly journal that serves as a repository for the best of African American preaching. She is currently working on a manuscript that examines the life and leadership of Septima Clark, who worked closely with Dr. King. 

Jackson-Weaver earned a B.A. from Princeton University, a specialized M.A. in education from Harvard University, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in American history from Columbia University.

The Princeton Seminary faculty established the annual King Lecture as a way of honoring the man who, according to Professor Peter Paris Jr., “ranks among the greatest American leaders in both church and state because he combined religious, social, and political resources in pursuit of racial justice and the moral enhancement of the common life.” Previous lecturers have included James W. Douglass, James H. Cone, Katie Geneva Cannon, and Michael Dyson. For more information, call 609.497.7760 or visit www.ptsem.edu.

Princeton Theological Seminary was founded in 1812 as the first seminary established by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. It is the largest Presbyterian seminary in the country, with more than 700 students in seven graduate degree programs.