In celebration of Black History and Women’s History Month, Ms. Bettie Mae Fikes will be the guest speaker at Emory & Henry College on Monday, April 1, at the McGlothlin Center for the Arts on the Emory campus. Fikes will discuss her experiences as a musician and activist during the Civil Rights Movement with the E&H community and public. Known as the “Voice of Selma,” she is a celebrated Civil Rights icon who traveled with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Selma Freedom Rights struggle.
Fikes is a recipient of the Long Walk to Freedom Award and was inducted into the Smithsonian Institution in an exhibition highlighting women of the Civil Rights Movement. Besides her music career, Fikes delivers lectures about diversity and civil rights at universities throughout the United States. “I travel around the country trying to deliver the message my grandmother passed to me,” said Fikes. “I am too strong to be broken down. All I can say is we know where we’ve been, but we don’t know where we’re going.”
Born in Selma, Alabama, and part of a family of gospel singers and preachers, Fikes sang alongside her mother as a child. As a student, she was involved with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was a founding member of their Freedom Singers music group. During her career, Fikes performed with the likes of Joe Turner, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Albert King, Bob Dylan, James Brown, and Mavis Staples. She has graced the stages of Carnegie Hall, the Newport Jazz Festival, and the Library of Congress.
Fikes’ presentation is free and open to the greater community as well as Emory & Henry students, faculty and staff. The event will be held at the McGlothlin Center for the Arts Kennedy~Reedy Theatre.
For more information about Emory & Henry’s Division of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging, please contact Dr. Amy Sorenson, Director of Inclusion at [email protected] or visit www.ehc.edu/deib.
