The UALR Institute on Race and Ethnicity will present “Meet the Author” at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 30, in Engel Alumni Hall at the Bailey Alumni and Friends Center featuring University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor emeritus of Speech Communication, Dr. Allan Ward.

Ward will be interviewed by Trevor Collins, a UALR East Scholar and E-commerce major. They will discuss Ward’s recent book Civil Rights Brothers: The Journey of Allan Ward and Albert Porter.

The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

“Because civic duty is not a theoretical concept – it requires application – giving students the opportunity to meet individuals who participated in events as significant as the Civil Rights Movement is essential in teaching them about social responsibility,” said Dr. Michael R. Twyman, institute director.

In Civil Rights Brothers, Ward focuses on his friendship and civic activities with longtime friend and colleague Albert Porter, the late activist who helped train college students in methods of non-violent protests in Jackson, Tenn., during the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1960, Ward received his doctorate in the North but was determined to teach speech communication in the South.

“I knew I couldn’t work at a white state college and participate in civil rights activities – I had to go into to civil rights,” said Ward.

Ward met Porter at Lane College when he became a faculty member at the historically black institution. The two not only became friends but forged a partnership to fight prejudice for more than 50 years, working first in Tennessee and later in Mississippi and Arkansas.

Their professional careers and civic activities eventually led them both to Little Rock where Porter and Ward remained active in the community and neighbors and longtime residents of the University Park neighborhood.

“We hope that the campus community will take this opportunity to learn from one of our own who has devoted much of his life to achieving a more just society. As Dr. Ward has said, ‘It was like magic to see what happens when we talk to each other as people and not as categories,’” said Twyman.

According to Ward, he and Porter travelled all over the world working together to fight for racial equality before Porter passed away in 2013.

Copies of Ward’s book can be purchased at local bookstore WordsWorth Books in Little Rock, on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

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