Student Association Announces Speaker Series

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, former Cherokee Nation chief Wilma Mankiller, performer Gregory Henderson and Chinese dissident Chai Ling will be featured in this fall's People's Speaker Series sponsored by the undergraduate Student Association (SA) at the University at Buffalo.

A lecture by Emmy Award-winning actor Edward James Olmos, part of the university's Distinguished Speaker Series, also will be co-sponsored by SA.

All lectures will be free of charge and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis, except for the Olmos lecture. While students will be admitted free, there will be a charge for members of the public. Call 645-ARTS for Olmos ticket information.

Wilma Mankiller, an important advocate for minority rights and women's issues, will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 22, in the Katharine Cornell Theatre in the Ellicott Complex on the North (Amherst) Campus.

Mankiller says that women are becoming more active in tribal leadership in ways that mirror the movement of all American women into politics.

Versatile performer Gregory Henderson will appear at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 29, in the Student Union Theatre on the North Campus. Henderson, who won New York's 1995 Back Stage "Bistro Award" for Outstanding Characterization, has been described by The New York Times as having the extraordinary ability to "utterly transform his face, his attitude, his slightest gesture."

Bobby Seale, one of the "Chicago Seven" activists of the 1960s who is now a writer and lecturer, will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 7, in the Mainstage theater in the Center for the Arts on the North Campus.

A founder of the Black Panther Party with Hughey P. Newton, Seale helped initiate numerous community programs, including those providing breakfasts to school children and free busing to senior citizens, as well as organizing mass voter-registration drives.

Chai Ling, who was commander-in-chief of the Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters during the 1989 democracy protests in China, will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 14, in the Screening Room in the Center for the Arts. A student at Harvard Business School, Ling has twice been nominated for a Nobel Prize.

Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning actor Edward James Olmos, a leading spokesman for the Hispanic community, will speak at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 19, in the Mainstage theater in the Center for the Arts.

For more information on any of the lectures, contact SA President Fernando Maisonett at 645-2950.