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During the spring semester, two students from the University of Arkansas at Monticello participated in the colloquium, “The Road to Freedom and Prosperity,” co-sponsored by the Center for Faith and Flourishing at John Brown University and the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics at the University of Central Arkansas.

Dorian Manuel, a sophomore exercise science major at UAM, and Carl Owens, a sophomore political science and criminal justice major and current president of the UAM Student Government Association, represented UAM at the conference held at 21c Museum Hotel Bentonville in downtown Bentonville, Arkansas, on February 25 and 26. 

Joining faculty and undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Central Arkansas, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, John Brown University and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Manuel and Owens, who are also student athletes who play for the UAM Boll Weevils football team, participated in a series of public lectures and seminars to hear and discuss the legacy and state of Black capitalism.

The colloquium—delayed for two years due to the pandemic—was intended to be hosted on the 100th anniversary of the 1919 Tulsa Race Riot, in which the fabled Black Wall Street of downtown Tulsa was destroyed in one of the era’s worst racial massacres. Featured speakers included Wilfred Reilly, Ph.D., associate professor of political science at Kentucky State University, and Theodore Johnson, senior fellow and director of the fellows program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law.

John Kyle Day, Ph.D., professor of history at UAM, accompanied Manuel and Owens to the colloquium. Day said, “I am very proud of performance of Dorian Manuel and Carl Owens, who participated with both upperclassmen and graduate students from institutions of higher education across the Natural State. They performed very well in the reading seminars and served as first-class ambassadors for our university. In special extracurricular events such as this, I am always reminded of the high quality of students right here at UAM.” 

For further information, contact John Kyle Day, Ph.D., at 870-460-1887 or day@uamont.edu.