March 16, 2005 -- The award-winning one-woman show “Fannie Lou Hamer: This Little Light . . .” will be part of the activities for “Delta Blues Symposium XI: Imagining the Delta,” to be held on the Arkansas State University campus in Jonesboro Thursday through Saturday, April 7 - 9. All Symposium events are free and open to the public.

Presented by veteran actress Billie Jean Young, the performance is scheduled for 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 9, in the Black Box Theatre at Fowler Center, 201 Olympic Dr.

Billie Jean Young lives in Pennington, Ala., and holds degrees from Selma University, Judson College, and Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law. A former faculty member in speech and drama at Jackson State University, she teaches at Mississippi State University, Meridian campus. She also co-founded and directed the Southern Rural Women’s Network.

She is author of the poetry collection, “My Name Is Black,” and “Fear Not the Fall,” which includes her two-act dramatization of the career of Civil Rights pioneer Fannie Lou Hamer.

Her one-woman show recaptures the breadth and depth of Hamer’s journey from downtrodden field worker to champion of civil and human rights. Young places her subject within the context of the history of the Civil Rights Movement, especially in the Mississippi River Delta.

Funding and other assistance has been provided by the Department of Art, Department of History, Department of Theatre, Department of Music, Heritage Studies Ph.D. Program, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Office of Diversity Initiatives, and Lecture~Concert Series.