Released January 13, 1999

John Horhn to Keynote Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Observance

DANVILLE, KY - Centre College alumnus John Horhn, a multi-talented actor, writer and elected official, will serve as the featured speaker for the 1999 observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday celebration at the college. The program is set for Sunday, Jan. 17, at 6 p.m. in Newlin Hall of the Norton Center for the Arts. The public is welcome to attend at no cost.

A 1977 graduate of Centre, Horhn has served on the college's board of trustees since 1994. In 1992, he was elected to the Mississippi State Senate, and two years later he was cited by the Mississippi Business Journal as one of the top 40 young leaders in the state. He is a member of state committees for economic development, science and technology, and international trade.

Horhn is president of Horhn & Associates, a community development consulting agency located in Jackson, Miss., with clients throughout the state. Before founding the firm, Horhn was Mississippi's state film commissioner, recruiting more than 25 movie and television projects to be filmed on location in the state. Among them were Mississippi Burning and Crossroads.

A member of the Screen Actors' Guild, Horhn has appeared in several made-for-TV films and is regularly featured in productions for Mississippi Educational Television. He wrote and has performed The Eyes of Black Folk, a one-person show that uses historical and fictional characters to narrate American history from a black perspective. In the show, Horhn depicts King, Nat Turner, and unnamed characters including a slave, a World War I veteran and a modern-day revolutionary.

The annual King holiday celebration commemorates the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Born in Georgia in 1929, he rose to prominence as the leader of the U.S. civil rights movement. Educated to become a minister and theologian, he advocated nonviolent resistance as a way of ending legal segregation in the United States.

King rose to prominence during the 1955-56 Birmingham bus boycott and subsequently traveled and spoke extensively throughout the country. His efforts set the stage for Congressional passage of the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act, and King received the Nobel Peace Prize that year in honor of his work. He continued to speak out for human rights and was assassinated in 1968, leading to the designation of his birthday as a national holiday and memorial.

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Communications Office
Centre College
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Danville, KY 40422

Coordinator of Public Information: Patsi Barnes Trollinger
Telephone 606-238-5719 · trllngrp@centre.edu