The speaker for the occasion is Dr. Lucius R. Wyatt, a retired Professor of Music and former head of the department of Music and Theatre at Prairie View A&M University. The program is open to the public and is being hosted by the Eta Gamma Chapter (PVAMU), Epsilon Tau Lambda (Prairie View), Pi Omicron (TAMU) and Pi Alpha Lambda (College Station) Chapters, and Sigma Gamma Lambda (Cypress-Katy), all members of Area IX of the Fraternity.
In Wyatt’s 32 years at the university he held several positions including
Chairman of the university’s Performing Artists Series for fourteen years,
director of the PVAMU Symphonic Band which presented more than 120 concerts on
the campus and in cities of the Southwest and released four compact disc of
concert music. He is the author of more
than twenty-five articles on African American music published in books and
journals. He formerly served as director of bands at Tuskegee University, and was
elected as the Alabama College Band Director of the Year. During his military service he was a musician
stationed with the US Army in Heidelberg, Germany.
Wyatt is an honors graduate of Florida
A&M University who later earned the degrees Master of Music and the PhD in
music theory from the prestigious Eastman School of Music of the University of
Rochester in Rochester, New York. Among his many honors is his election to
Who’s Who in America, the recipient of two New Achiever awards from PVAMU, a
Visiting Scholar at North Carolina Central University, and he was awarded a
doctoral fellowship by the Southern Fellowships Fund, Inc., of Atlanta.
He is a member of the Prairie View First
United Methodist Church where he serves on the Board of Trustees. Wyatt and his wife Christine organized and
directed the Annual Christmas Cantata with singers and musicians from churches
in the community for twenty-three years.
He is the former president of the Prairie View Retired Teachers and
School Personnel Association and a fifty-year member of the Alpha Phi Alpha
Fraternity, Inc., and a member of Epsilon Tau Lambda Chapter in Prairie
View.
Since its founding, the fraternity has
provided leadership and service during the Great Depression, World War II,
Civil Rights Movements, and addressed social issues such as apartheid and urban
housing, and other economic, cultural, and political issues affecting people of
color. The fraternity’s mentoring, academic achievement and voter education
programs and its relationships with the March of Dimes, Big Brothers Big
Sisters and Boy Scouts are priority-one for the fraternity. Some of its major
programs include the Million Dollar Contribution to the National Urban League,
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the
United Negro Scholarship Fund and its lead role in the management and
construction of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the Washington
Mall. Dr. King was one of the most revered brothers of the fraternity. Attorney
Harry E. Johnson, Sr., the fraternity’s 31st General President serves as the
President of the MLK Foundation. The
fraternity is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland with Mr. Mark Tillman as the
General President.
The fraternity’s membership is more than
two hundred thousand college trained men dispersed in more than 1,500 college
and 900 alumni chapters throughout the United States, Korea, Europe and the
Caribbean. Some of its prominent members are Justice Thurgood Marshall,
Congressmen Emmanuel Cleaver, Al Green, William Gray, Ralph Metcalf and Charles
Rangel; Ebony Publisher John H. Johnson, former PVAMU presidents Alvin I.
Thomas, E. B. Evans, Charles Hines and E. B. Evans; Mayors Lee P. Brown, David
Dinkins, Maynard Jackson, Frank Jackson, Raymond E. Carreathers, Jiles P. Daniels, Sr., Michael Wolfe and
Ernest Morial, Texas Representatives Al Edwards, Sylvester Turner, Boris Miles
and Ronal Reynolds; musicians Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie;
Rhodes Scholar and Activist Paul Robeson, W. E. B. DeBois; Olympian Jesse
Owens, and legendary coaches Eddie Robinson and Lenny Wilkins, to name a few./END
Contact: Frederick V. Roberts – 979-221-8430
unitancommunications@yahoo.com
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