The Institute on ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience (IECME) of the Rutgers University, New Jersey has rounded its conference in observance of Black History Month with the 23rd annual Marion Thompson Wright Lecture.

This year?s lecture was delivered by the distinguished American historian and biographer David Levering Lewis on the general theme: W.E.B DuBois on Africa and in Africa.

The occasion was also an affirmation of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah?s star role in the promotion of Pan-Africanism as well as Nkurmah?s invitation to DuBois to live in Ghana where he died in August 1963.

Ghana?s out-going Ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Alan Kyerematen who was one of the special guests joined representatives of the Governor of New Jersey, the President of Rutgers University and the Mayor to salute the memory of the icon often referred to as the father of Pan-Africanism.

As a first gesture, Ambassador Kyerematen was given the symbolic key to the city of Newark and after another symbolic gesture was the playing of the Negro national anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing and that of Ghana, Hail the name of Ghana.

The Ambassador reminded the over four hundred audience which included academicians, writers and civil rights activists at the Paul Robeson Hall that African-Americans in America and Africans on the continent share the same challenges and that American?s policies in Africa could be measured relative to the treatment melted to African-Americans in America.

?You are not a minority since you have over 800 million Africans behind you?, he said to applause. He however advised that like W.E.B. DuBois, African-American should visit mainland Africa for spiritual and also bilateral concerns. Hundred years after the publication of his most outstanding book ? The souls of Black Folk and Forty years since his passing away in Accra, Ghana, DuBois is one of the most revered and prolific black writers and intellectuals.

Professor David Levering Lewis who is also the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor at Rutgers and Pulitzer prize winning scholar treated his subject?s first visit to Africa, his ultimate citizenship in Ghana (partly to work on Kwame Nkrumah?s other dream ? Encyclopedia Africana), with some solemnity and great respect quoting (with a mimicry DuBois voice) from The Souls of Black Folk, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860 ? 1880 and Of the Dawn of Freedom.

An Afternoon session was a forum for further reflection on DuBois in Africa and on Africa. Dr. Y. DuBois Williams, a granddaughter of DuBois who teaches at Xavier University spoke about the quality time she had with her grandfather and the lessons taught.

Rosamond S. King, Geraldine R. Dodge, Post-doctoral Fellow at the IECME spoke about slavery and ongoing research into the number of people who might have perished crossing the Atlantic Ocean into the Americas.

Mr. Ivor Agyeman-Duah, Head of Public Affairs, Embassy of Ghana, Washington DC, Spoke on the intellectual capacity of DuBois and Kwame Nkrumah?s pan-African vision.

After the lecture the local Ghanaian business and cultural community in the tradition of the lecture series provided soul food, Ghanaian dishes, to the over 400 participants at the Paul Robeson Campus center.

The Director of IECME Prof. Clement Alexander Price, himself a historian and expert on black history and culture expressed satisfaction with the conference for the diversity of opinion and the momentum.

The Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience is a community-oriented interdisciplinary academic program that furthers public intellectual work and informed civic discourse in the Greater Newark area.

Since its inception 23 years ago, the Institute has mounted scores of public programs that place distinguished scholars, artists and civic leaders in settings that foster intercultural discourse, literacy and discovery. [See: http://ethnicity.Rutgers.edu]