touched and moved

last year i was touched and moved to receive a recognition from my peers for some community service work i've been doing. for the past 25 years i've been lending my effort in small ways to increase the quantity of learning going on in our communities, while trying to empower those whose voices and views have for too long been ignored.

in may, 2000, i was deeply honored to be asked to be the keynote speaker at the annual "computers in adult literacy" conference in philadelphia. i did not feel up to the task, so i asked for help from stephon gray, an adult literacy learner, who gave the keynote presentation with me. in the keynote address we showed a narrated biography of civil rights activist fannie lou hamer that stephon gray had written and narrated in his job at the literacy resources division of the DC Public Libraries. we used a $5 shareware program named SimpleCard to create this presentation. this software runs on just about any macintosh ever made, including those from 1988. so it could be used fairly easily by literacy students and literacy organizations who receive donated macs.

i value stephon gray's biography of fannie lou hamer a lot, so i sought help from others to convert it into the most number of forms -- so that it could be viewed by the most number of people around the world. thanks to help from others, this narrated biography can be viewed in powerpoint, quicktime and flash formats.

you can download the powerpoint and simplecard versions of the fannie lou hamer presentation from my idisk.

the powerpoint file is named fannielouhamer.zip
the simplecard file (mac only) is named fannielouhamer.sit

i find the biography stephon gray wrote reverberates with great dignity. stephon gray has taught me much i needed to know. he does so in way that is very charitable, patient and caring.