Celebrated Author, Professor to Keynote Bennekin Symposium at Perimeter College

DUNWOODY, Ga. — Award-winning novelist, professor and activist Daniel Black will keynote the fourth annual Mario A.J. Bennekin Black History Symposium at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College Feb. 19-23.

Black’s presentation is scheduled for Monday, Feb. 19, at 10 a.m. in the college’s Dunwoody Campus auditorium at 2101 Womack Road. The symposium theme is "The Challenges and Triumphs of the Black Working Class in America."

Black’s published works include “They Tell Me of a Home,” “The Sacred Place,” “Perfect Peace,” “Twelve Gates to the City,” “The Coming,” “Listen to the Lambs,” “Don’t Cry for Me” and “Black on Black.”

In 2014, Black won the Distinguished Writer’s Award from the Mid-Atlantic Writer’s Association. The Go On Girl! National Book Club named him Author of the Year in 2011 for his best-selling novel “Perfect Peace,” which has been reprinted more than 10 times and heralded as an American literary classic. Black also has been nominated for multiple literary awards including the Georgia Author of the Year Prize, Ernest J. Gaines Award, the Townsend Literary Prize and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.

In addition to his literary achievement, Black works as a diversity consultant, with speaking engagements at top-tier companies in America such as Google, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, AT&T and Global Payments. He assists corporations with creating work environments that value the input of their employees.

A native of Kansas City, Kan., Black graduated from Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University), where he earned the prestigious Oxford Modern British Studies fellowship and studied abroad at Oxford University. He was then awarded a full fellowship to Temple University where he studied with Black Arts Movement poet laureate Sonia Sanchez and, in 1992, earned his Ph.D. in African American Studies. Black has spent the majority of his 30 academic years as a professor of African American Studies at his alma mater, Clark Atlanta University.

The Bennekin Black History Symposium is named for Mario Bennekin, a beloved history professor and chair of the History and Political Science department at Perimeter, who taught for 20 years before passing in 2019. Bennekin was instrumental in bringing the African American Studies curriculum to Perimeter.

Kimberly Bennekin is a math professor at Perimeter and a co-chair of the event named to honor her late husband.

“We are beyond honored that Dr. Black has agreed to keynote our annual celebration of Black history,” Bennekin said.

“Dr. Black is an energetic, thought-provoking historian who leaves his audiences wanting more. We are certain that symposium attendees will find his presentation inspiring and highly informative.”

Additional symposium presentations bear titles such as “My Mind Stayed on Freedom: The Revolutionary Voice of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer” and "We Will Shoot Back: Armed Self-Defense in the Mississippi Freedom Movement" which will be delivered by Georgia State professors and others.

The symposium will close with a session at the Clarkston Campus featuring Sharon J. Willis and performers from the Americolor Opera Alliance.

The annual Mario A.J. Bennekin Symposium is free and open to the public.