Press Release

Seven State Agencies Join Together to Commemorate Black History

Published on 2/6/2006

Filed under: Electric Gas Water and Wastewater Telecommunications Transportation and Safety

HARRISBURG – The state’s Public Utility Commission, Departments of State, Community and Economic Development, Banking and Aging, the Governor’s Advisory Commission on African American Affairs and Historical and Museum Commission will celebrate community as they join together to celebrate Black History Month.

The program honoring Black History will begin at 12 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 9 in the Auditorium of the State Museum, North and Third streets, Harrisburg. A pre-program slide show will begin at 11:30 a.m.  The program is open to the public.

This year’s theme, “Celebrating Community: A Tribute to Black Fraternal, Social and Civic Institutions,” will highlight the role these organizations have played in creating a supportive environment for their members during college and also nurture service, social and business networks after college. While society has changed since these institutions were established, the role these organizations played in shaping Black History is significant as they are directly responsible for a great deal of the social changes.

Event speakers will include PUC Chairman Wendell F. Holland; Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortés; DCED Deputy Secretary Lisa Atkinson Brown; Secretary of Aging Nora Dowd Eisenhower; Secretary of Banking A. William Schenck; Governor’s Advisory Commission on African American Affairs Executive Director Sonya Toler and Historical and Museum Commission Executive Director Barbara Franco. 

The keynote presentation will be a theatrical chronology of Black History with dramatization, dance and songs performed by The Stuart Sisters of Philadelphia.

The program also will include a special tribute to three woman of distinction. For their historic legacies of achievement, the celebration will honor the lives and service of:

• Rosa Parks, whose act of civil disobedience in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white man, inspired the modern civil rights movement. Ms. Parks died in October 2005.
• C. DeLores Tucker, named PA Secretary of the Commonwealth by then-Gov. Milton Shapp, making her the highest ranking African American woman in state government, went on to become a nationally known political and social activist. Ms. Tucker died in November 2005.
• LeGree Daniels, a central Pennsylvania woman who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to be Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education, chaired the Black Republican Caucus and served as a Governor of the U.S. Postal Service, dedicated her life to equal rights for all. Ms. Daniels died in November 2005.

Contact:

• Press Secretary
  717-787-5722