Findlay, Ohio – Dr. Mary Sterner Lawson, an expert on the civil rights movement in Albany, Ga., will present “Freedom is a Constant Struggle: The Albany Civil Rights Movement Revisited” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21, in The University of Findlay Alumni Memorial Union’s Endly Room.  Her talk is part of the University’s celebration of Black History Month.

Lawson, the daughter of the late Wilbur Sterner and Pauline Beck Sterner, is a 1964 Findlay High School graduate and a 1968 alumna of Findlay College.

Her speech will be a historical look at what took place in Albany, Ga., a unique civil rights battleground where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gained knowledge that would aid him in later struggles in Selma and Birmingham.

According to Lawson, efforts to achieve better conditions in Albany were taking place before, during and after King’s historic visits in the early 1960s, though some historians look at Albany only in the light of King’s alleged failures there.

Lawson has lectured in the United States and internationally on the topics of oral history and civil rights in conferences in Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands. She resided for 32 years in Albany, Ga., where she was involved with the preparations to open the Albany Civil Rights Movement Museum in 1998, after which she served as a board member and vice president for five years. During this time, Lawson taught English, humanities, and modern languages at Albany State University, founded in 1903 as a historically African-American institution.    

After graduating from Findlay College, Lawson went on to Bowling Green University where she held a fellowship in the department of English, receiving her master’s degree in 1972, and her doctorate in English in 1975.  After retiring from Albany State University in 2003, she moved to Tallahassee, Fla., where she taught as an adjunct professor at Florida State University before devoting full-time efforts to art, oral history and writing. Her oral history, “June Bug’s Grocery and the Cornfield Jook: A South Albany Oral History,” was published in 2003 by Arcadia Publishing Company.

A book signing will be held following the lecture in the Alumni Memorial Union, and a book talk will be held following her public lecture at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, at the Findlay Public Library.

For more information on the free, public lecture, contact the Office of Intercultural Student Services at 419-434-6967, or at Buford@findlay.edu.