Rev. E. Randel T. Osburn

Rev. E. Randel T. Osburn Featured at King Fellowship Dinner

Dec. 23, 2002

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — The Rev. E. Randel T. Osburn, the executive vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, will be the featured speaker for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Fellowship Dinner on Sunday, January 12, 2003, at 5 p.m. at Illinois Wesleyan University.

Co-sponsored by Illinois Wesleyan and The United Community Gospel Singers of Bloomington and Normal, the annual dinner will be held in the Main Lounge of the Memorial Center, 104 E. University St., Bloomington.

Tickets for the dinner are $12 for adults and students and $6 for children under 12. Tickets may be purchased by calling Corine Sims at 309/828-4602 or by calling Illinois Wesleyan’s Office of Multicultural Affairs at 309/556-3412.

Osburn’s visit to Illinois Wesleyan is part of the University’s celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day.

A 28-year veteran of the SCLC, Osburn was the youngest minister on King’s original field staff. He was active in the sit-in movement in the early 1960s, desegregating lunch counters in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and was arrested and jailed 72 times. He was also at the forefront of the anti-war movement in the mid-1960s.

Osburn is the founder of the Martin Luther King Youth Foundation, which developed and sponsored programs that generated more than a half-million dollars for employment training and development. In addition, he has coordinated the SCLC’s "Stop the Killing" Campaign’s gun buy-back program since 1992.

Osburn has taught at Case Western University, Shaw University, Columbia University, and Malcolm X College. He developed a National Student Resource Bank to assist civil and human-rights groups with research projects and studies.