Yolanda King set to speak at SU graduation

The speaker for the Fall 2001 Southern University Commencement Ceremony was born in Montgomery, Ala.–two weeks before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus. Ever since, Yolanda King has been in the midst of the struggle for human rights all her life.
The first-born child of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, Yolanda has intertwined her early involvement in civil and human rights demonstrations with her childhood experiences in theater, and today is devoted to affecting social change through the arts.
She explains: “While it is imperative to actively challenge the forces that deny human beings their right to a decent life, one must also stimulate and alter the hearts and minds of both the ‘privileged’ and ‘those who have been too long denied.’ Within the arts lies this power.”
At the age of eight, Ms. King wrote a play in which she directed her siblings and subsequently performed for her parents and friends. By the age of twelve, she had choreographed two musicals and directed several theatrical productions. These early initiatives ignited an interest in the arts, which led her to The Actors and Writer’s Workshop in Atlanta, Ga., where she studied speech, acting, and dance and appeared in productions around the Atlanta area.
King would later earn a Bachelor of Arts with honors degree in theater and African-American studies from Smith College in Northhampton, Mass., and a Master of Fine Arts in theater while studying in New York, beginning a career in the arts. She became a founding member of Christian Theater Artists with Attalah Shabazz (the eldest child of Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz). She served as co-founding director of NUCLEUS. For ten years NUCLEUS toured schools, colleges, churches and communities with an original production entitled Stepping Into Tomorrow.
In addition to working with a number of human rights organizations and causes, King has taught theater to both children and college students. Her most recent teaching position was at Fordham University in New York City, where she served as a visiting professor in theater.
King serves on the board of directors of The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Incorporated (the official national memorial to Dr. King), and was the founding director of the King Center’s cultural affairs program.