Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Lecture

Please join Roger Williams University School of Law for our Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Lecture featuring Keynote Speaker Noliwe Rooks, a multi-methods scholar and L. Herbert Ballou University Professor in Africana Studies/Rites and Reason Theatre.

Noliwe Rooks' award-winning scholarship explores how education, beauty, race, and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, social history, and political life in the United States.

The author of six books and numerous articles, essays, and op-ed’s, her most recent book, Integrated: How Schools in America Failed Black Children, was long listed for the 2026 Pen America Galbraith Award for Non-Fiction, and the New York Public Library named Integrated as a Best Book in 2025. She also earned a 2025 NAACP Image Award nomination for nonfiction for her fifth monograph, A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune. In2018, she earned an award for nonfiction from the Hurston/Wright Foundation for Cutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education. She has received research funding from the Ford Foundation and the Mellon Foundation among others. She lectures frequently at colleges and universities around the country and is a contributor to popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Time Magazine and NPR.

Inducted into the Society of American Historians, and Morehouse College’s Society of Fellows in 2025, her most recent book, Integrated is about how the implementation of integration/desegregation strategies impacted Black children and communities, and explores four generations of her family history with education in the United States.

There will be a reception following the lecture.

Register for Lecture

Special Accommodations
Persons who, because of a special need or condition, would like to request an accommodation for an event should contact the Office of the Dean - Programs & Initiatives, as soon as possible, but no later than 72 hours before the event, so that appropriate arrangements can be made. lawevents@rwu.edu