The Center for Black Studies will be hosting the Black Heritage Month opening ceremony Thursday night in the Carl Sandburg Auditorium at 7 p.m.

The ceremony is titled “Freeing the African Mind, Human Rights in the New Millennium.”

Dr. Kenneth Jackson, principal at Jefferson High School in Rockford, will be the keynote speaker. Van Amos, the program director for the Center of Black Studies, said Jackson is an excellent role model for students to meet.

“Several of our students are from Rockford and know he is a dynamic personality,” Amos said. “He has core values. His students will be successful and he expects them to do well in school.”

He said Jackson will talk about what Black Heritage Month means to him and why everybody should celebrate.

Amos believes Black Heritage Month is important to everyone.

“I encourage all of the university community to help celebrate and help rededicate some of the great Americans in our country’s history,” he said.

Various NIU student organizations will also have presentations regarding past and present leaders.

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