Minnesota West Community & Technical College will host Dr. Leslie McLemore at the Fine Arts Theatre in Worthington on January 17. The presentation will begin at 1:30 pm and will also be available via Zoom. We invite you all to join in this opportunity which is open to the public.

Leslie-Burl McLemore was born in Walls, Mississippi on August 17, 1940, the son of sharecroppers.^[1][2]

In September 1960, McLemore began studies at Rust College. It was there that he first became seriously involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Within a month, McLemore participated in a boycott of a theatre in Holly Springs because they would not allow blacks to sit in the downstairs section.^[1]

While at Rust College, McLemore would continue to be involved in student protests. He also became involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in various activities including voter registration drives.^[1] McLemore served as the northern regional coordinator for the 1963 Freedom Ballot campaign.^[2]

In 1964, McLemore was intimately involved in the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). He was a founding member of the MFDP Executive Committee, an MFDP delegate to the 1964 Democratic National Convention, and Vice Chair of the Party. Previous to the convention, he worked alongside Ella Baker, Frank Smith, Elenore Homes Norton, and Charlies Sherrod as coordinator and lobbyist of the National Office of the MFDP in Washington DC.^[3]

McLemore graduated from Rust College in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in social science and economics. He is a founding president of Rust College's chapter of the NAACP. He pursued graduate studies at Atlanta University, where he obtained a master's degree in political science.^[2]

Later, McLemore received a doctorate in government from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.^[2] At the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, McLemore helped to found the W.E.B. DuBois Department of African American Studies. He later had post-doctoral fellowships at Johns Hopkins University and at Harvard University. He then took a position teaching at Jackson State University as the founding Chair of the Department of Political Science, and then Dean of the Graduate School and Founding Director of the Office of Research. McLemore concluded his service at Jackson State as the Interim President of the intuition. He has published in black politics, southern politics, environmental politics, and the Civil Rights Movement. He is the co-author of, Freedom Summer: A Brief History with Documents.^[3]