CINCINNATI, OH – Dr. Virgil Wood, church leader, educator, and civil rights activist, will visit Cincinnati as part of Union Institute & University’s (UI&U) Academic residency for the cohort Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies program. As part of his visit, the Harvard-educated Baptist pastor will present the talk, “Transposing the Dream of Martin Luther King, Jr.,”6:30 p.m., Sunday, July 6, in the Archway Ballroom of the Phoenix Club, Downtown. Dr. Wood will also help launch Union Institute & University’s new specialization in MLK studies as part of the cohort in interdisciplinary studies.
Ordained as a Baptist Minister in his late teens, Wood has served churches in RI, MA, and VA. During his Pastorate in Lynchburg, VA, he became actively involved with the civil rights movement, setting up Martin Luther King’s work there as the Lynchburg Improvement Association, a local unit of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He served with the Conference for the last ten years of Dr. King’s life and work, and coordinated the state of VA in the Historic March on Washington April 28, 1963.
In 1973, he received his Doctorate in Education from Harvard University. As an educator, he served as Dean and Director of the African American Institute and Associate Professor at Northeastern University in Boston, and has been a professor at Virginia Seminary and College in Lynchburg, and a visiting lecturer, research and teaching fellow at Harvard University.
Dr. Wood has many notable accomplishments. As an administrator for Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America, a job training organization serving disadvantaged and under-skilled Americans of all races, he assisted in founding and establishing 13 OIC centers in eight southern states, and in Boston, MA. Wood also served as a panelist and member of three White House conferences under the Johnson, Nixon, and Carter administrations.
For more information about the talk contact: Jonathan Eskridge, Program Director, 513-487-1199 or jonathan.eskridge@
