Actress and public speaker Yolanda King will return to campus to deliver the Cornell University Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture titled "Open My Eyes, Open My Soul: Discovering the Power of Diversity," Tuesday, Feb. 15, at 5 p.m. in Sage Chapel. 

King was selected to speak by the university's King Commemoration Committee last spring, said Kenneth Clarke, director of Cornell United Religious Work (CURW). 

"As Dr. King's daughter and inheritor of his legacy, we felt she would be an ideal person to provide a perspective that would resonate with the campus as well as the local community," said Clarke, who met King when she was invited to speak at Penn State University's King Commemoration in 1998. "She is an eloquent speaker." 

Indeed, King, first-born daughter of Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr., is a much-sought-after motivational speaker and teacher. She has addressed Fortune 500 companies and the United Nations as well as religious, civic and educational groups in the United States and abroad. She is founder and CEO of Higher Ground Productions, a California-based organization dedicated to social change and world peace by advocating diversity and unity.

King received a bachelor's degree in theater and African-American studies from Smith College and a master's degree in theater from New York University. She serves on the board of directors of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and was the founding director of the King Center's cultural affairs program. She is a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Partnership Council of Habitat for Humanity, a sponsor of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and she holds a lifetime membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 

King performed the role of Mama in A Raisin in the Sun, staged at Cornell's Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts last fall. 

For more information about her visit, contact CURW at (607) 255-6004.