The ninth-annual Robert Smalls Lecture will take place at 7 p.m. March 23 in the Russell House Ballroom.

This year's speaker will be Vashti Murphy McKenzie, the presiding prelate in the Thirteenth Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Churuch. Her lecture is entitled "Leadership and Values in Times of Crisis: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow."

The event is free and open to the public. A book signing and reception will follow the lecture.

McKenzie serves as the 117th elected and consecrated bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Her historic election in 2000 represents the first time in the 200-year history of the A.M.E. Church that a woman obtained that level of Episcopal office. In 2004, she again made history when she became the first woman named as the president of the Council of Bishops. As president, she was the highest-ranking woman in the predominately Black Methodist denominations.

McKenzie is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park; holds a Master of Divinity from Howard University School of Divinity; and has earned a Doctor of Ministry degree from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. She is the author of three books: Not without a Struggle, Strength in the Struggle, and Journey to the Well.

The Robert Smalls Lecture is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and the African-American Studies Program at USC. Co-sponsors are the African-American Professors Program, the Association of African-American Students, the Institute of Families in Society, the Institute of Southern Studies, the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, the Office of the Benjamin E. Mays Professor, the Office of I. DeQuincey Newman Endowed Chair, the Black Alumni Association, and the Women's Studies Program.

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