Donald L. Fixico's scholarly achievements include pioneering contributions to Native American ethnohistory and oral history

Arizona State University Professor Donald L. Fixico doesn’t like surprises, especially when they involve a boss.

Last October, he was contacted by ASU President Michael M. Crow’s assistant asking for his availability. The caller did not give a reason for the meeting, and Fixico was left hanging in suspense.

It was definitely not that.

When Fixico finally met with Crow in his office a week later, he was told that he had been named one of four Regents’ Professors for the 2018-19 academic year.

“It was a major relief,” Fixico said with a laugh. “I thought I might have to look for another job.”

That doesn’t appear to be likely now.

Regents’ Professor is the highest faculty honor and is conferred on full professors who have made remarkable achievements that have brought them national attention and international distinction.

Less than 3 percent of all faculty at Arizona State University carry the distinction.

Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, a President’s Professor, director of the Center for Indian Education and ASU’s special adviser to the president on American Indian affairs, was quick to sing Fixico's praises.

“Don Fixico is among the very best historians of American Indians in the world," he said. "He is prolific, and, importantly, his work is meaningful to many of us outside of history. Having Don as a colleague at ASU means that we have someone who is very, very competent, who is fair-minded and tough and who cares deeply about American Indian students and faculty. I admire him as a scholar and as a human being; he really is a gentleman and a scholar.”

The designation capped off a banner year for Fixico. He published his latest book, "Indian Treaties in the United States," and finished serving as president of the Western History Association, considered one of the most prestigious appointments in historical studies. In recognition of Fixico’s prolific scholarly legacy, that organization presented the first Donald Fixico Book Award in 2018. The $1,000 award annually recognizes innovative work in the field of American Indian and Canadian First Nations history that centers on indigenous epistemologies and perspectives.

The Oklahoma native, who is Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Muscogee Creek and Seminole, has far exceeded his own expectations. He has come a long way from working in construction during the summers in order to put himself through college.

“I began to realize there’s got to be an easier way of making a living,” Fixico said. “My big ambition was just to get a job that was indoors.”

It almost didn’t happen.

He tried his hand at chemical engineering but couldn’t keep up with the accelerating coursework and finally accepted that he was in over his head. He switched majors to history, and everything clicked. Though it took several years for him to understand, he says his mind worked like a wheel and took a circular, rather than linear, approach when writing. He said that approach didn’t endear him to his professors or future editors, but he learned to adjust.

Fixico said he had to rewrite his first book, "Termination and Relocation," four times before it was published in 1986.

He has published more than a dozen more in the ensuing years and today is considered among the foremost scholars in North American Indian history. Among his pursuits is writing a major Indian history textbook for Oxford University Press and writing the chapter, “Writing American Indian History in the 21st Century,” for Vol. 1 of the "Handbook of North American Indians" by the Smithsonian Institute.

Collection of books written by ASU Professor Donald L. Fixico. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

Fixico has created a knowledge base of the narratives that did not exist before his research in what he calls the “Medicine Way of American Indian History.” He has shown the importance of Indian oral traditions and Native perspectives in general as a necessary ingredient for the writing of not only Indian histories but American histories. He said that developed as a necessity when he gave his first lecture at Rose State College, where he taught a course as a doctoral student.

“I delivered that first lecture with a lot of energy and gave it everything I had, and walked out of that classroom so proud,” Fixico said. “Then I realized that I told them everything I knew and didn’t have anything else to offer my students. I was so tightly focused on American Indians. Then I got very scared because I realized that I didn’t know enough about other types of history.”

Fixico made a concerted effort to have lunch with older professors who could teach him world history from different eras. He said this exercise helped him to understand that history has universal themes such as liberty, democracy, sovereignty, love and hate.  

“An important key to teaching history is making big-idea concepts and themes relevant to everyday life,” Fixico said. 

Today Fixico is now that "older professor" who is teaching others how to become historians. Three years ago, ASU recognized him with the Doctoral Student Mentor Award. To date he has mentored and graduated 16 PhD students and has two more in the pipeline. One of his former students is William S. Kiser, an assistant professor and director of the Global Borders and Borderlands History Program at Texas A&M University-San Antonio.

“Professor Fixico just didn’t teach us history — he taught us the craft of being a historian,” said Kiser, who received his PhD from ASU in 2016. “He’d teach us things about tenure, the importance of publishing, peer guidelines. He instilled a high bar of excellence in the most compassionate way possible.”

Farina King, an assistant professor of history at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, also gave Fixico high marks for his tutelage.

“The most valuable thing he did was enable us to discover what made us special as students and scholars, and how to understand ourselves as individuals,” King said. “I never felt like a checkbox to him because he made himself available to us at all times and was always in the moment. I’ve found other scholars to be self-serving, but Professor Fixico is a humble person and a person you naturally respect and honor.”

Fixico said that though he studies and teaches history, millennials are teaching him that he must stay relevant to their issues and concerns in order to engage them in the classroom.

“I want them to think analytically and to articulate their views as well as they can and improve,” Fixico said. “They are teaching me that I must stay in tune with what’s going on in the world, and if you can keep an open mind, you can learn something new every day. … It’s refreshing to stay young in that way.”

Top photo: Regents' Professor of history Donald L. Fixico, of the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, is the author of more than a dozen books on American Indian issues. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

ASU College of Law brings together talent to host 5th annual 'Wiring the Rez'

With the growth of e-commerce and other assets that can be earned through the internet, Indian Country is no longer bound to geographic borders.

Tribal governments have enormous opportunities to grow their economic-development abilities through their sovereignty, including web-based businesses, sports betting, tax initiatives, blockchain and a multitude of new industries.

That’s the goal of the “Wiring the Rez: Innovative Strategies for Business Development Via E-Commerce" conference, which is specifically geared to tribal governments, indigenous businesses and Native peoples. Offered through Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and the Indian Legal Program, the conference will take place Jan. 31–Feb. 1 on the Gila River Indian Reservation.

ASU Now spoke with Robert J. Miller, a professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and the faculty director of the Rosette LLP American Indian Economic Development Program, ahead of the conference.

Robert J. Miller

Question: Why the need for this conference, and what do you hope participants will get out of it?

Answer: This is our fifth annual Wiring the Rez conference at ASU College of Law. We have begun to focus more heavily on economic-development issues in our Indian Legal Program because American Indians are the poorest people in the United States. On reservations and Indian lands, more families live below the poverty line than any other Americans. Unemployment can reach as high as 80 to 90 percent on some reservations, and most reports state that unemployment averages 50 percent on the 300-plus reservations across the United States. Indian peoples are also the least educated, with the shortest life spans, and with the poorest health and housing conditions for any identifiable group of Americans. The need for economic development of any and all kinds is self-evident in light of these facts.

Much of the American economy today is based on the internet and e-business, so it is only natural that Indian nations and tribal communities should look to improve the e-commerce conditions in Indian Country for tribal governments and Indian entrepreneurs. On the flip side, though, some tribal governments have succeeded very well at "regular" economic-development activities, and some reservations are becoming more prosperous due to tribal economic activities and gaming. Yet every economy needs diversification, and even for those successful reservations, where the standard of living has risen, tribal governments and reservation economies need to diversify their economic activities and “thicken” and thereby strengthen their economies. E-commerce is a natural candidate for economic expansion in the 21st century.

Conference participants will be exposed to new ideas about how tribal governments and Native entrepreneurs can better access the web and can better profit from business conducted online. Our conference attendees also benefit from networking with tribal representatives and Indian business people at such gatherings.

Q: E-commerce, as you have stated in your literature, has helped to create thriving economies on a few reservations, but has also led to a complicated tangle of legal issues. Give us an example of the legal issues that tribes face?

A: One of the first legal issues that Indian nations face is the federal “trust responsibility.” The United States plays an important and sometimes overwhelming role in Indian affairs, including in economic activities. So one of the legal issues that tribal nations have to deal with is the paternalistic role of the United States and the various federal approvals and laws that must be complied with to engage in many businesses on reservations. Some tribes have also encountered state interference with business activities such as gaming and e-commerce, and all tribes face the question of state competition and jealousy over successful tribal businesses. While these last two points are not specifically legal issues, they do become legal issues when dealing with states and fighting over jurisdiction and power, which includes subjects like the power to tax. Jurisdiction, regulation and taxation are definitely legal issues that tribal governments and individual Indians have to navigate with federal, state, county and city jurisdictions.

Some tribes have done very well in the e-lending world, and they have faced questions of both state competition and federal and state control. Ample litigation has ensued over this particular business activity, and our conference will discuss many of these pending cases.

Q: What are some of the other real-life issues that some tribes face as they look to get wired to the internet?

A: Due to the trust relationship that I mentioned above, and the fact that the United States is the legal owner of a lot of the land within Indian reservations, the United States has approval authority over various land leases and development projects that can involve issues concerning telephones, cable and internet. I do not think this has been much of a problem, however.

A much larger problem is the fact that Indian Country and Indian families are still grossly underserved by the internet. Somewhat similar to rural America, Indian Country lacks access to the best and highest-speed internet and the best telephone service. A 2018 Federal Communications Commission report demonstrated that more than 1.2 million residents of tribal lands lack access to high-speed internet! Extrapolating from those numbers infers that the FCC found that nearly every Indian living on any reservation lacks high-speed internet. In today's modern world, this is both highly regrettable and — in light of the federal trust responsibility for Indian nations and Native peoples — highly inexcusable. How can one function in the modern day and in the modern business world without access to high-speed internet and telephone connections that help "smart" phones really be "smart" and business people and economies on reservations conduct business efficiently, effectively and profitably?

Q: What are some of the unique e-commerce you’re seeing come out of the reservations?

A: I am of course not aware of all the e-commerce that Indian nations and individuals are engaged in. But I do know that some tribes are doing very well in the e-lending business, for example. Other tribal enterprises are working in the internet technology field itself, such as Cayuse Technologies, which is owned by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in northeastern Oregon; the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma's Cherokee Nation Technologies; and the Navajo Nation's DDC IT Services.

Furthermore, most of the thousands of Indian entrepreneurs and artists across the United States obviously use the web to promote and sell their products. For examples, I would note Native American Natural Foods, LLC, Tanka Bars; Bethany Yellowtail; Beyond Buckskin Boutique; Tribal Tech; and a platform for indigenous artisans, SOLVE.  

Q: What is the future of Native entrepreneurs and e-commerce?  

A: As for all Americans, our future seems to be intimately connected to the internet and e-commerce and e-life. Indian nations, Indian entrepreneurs and reservation economies must get fully connected and fully involved in the current, and the emerging, e-universe. Rural Americans and Indian peoples on reservations deserve the same access to the internet as all other Americans, and they must aggressively pursue their rights in this arena and the options available to make rural and reservation areas more prosperous and sustainable. I honestly believe that the future of Indian reservations as tribal homelands and the sustainability of tribal cultures depends on increasing the income levels and the living standards in Indian Country. The ASU Indian Legal Program's Wiring the Rez conference is a good step in that direction.

For more information on the Wiring the Rez conference, visit ASU Events.

Awards underscore professor's work in raising awareness about inhumanity and encouraging action on social justice issues

Arizona State University Professor Neal A. Lester agrees with poet Maya Angelou’s words: “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” But that doesn't mean that he sees no value in our differences. So he challenges people to recognize, celebrate and embrace those differences.

For his work supporting that approach, he will be recognized over the next few days with two awards named after civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  

“It’s validating and it’s also a challenge,” said Lester, the founding director of Project Humanities and an ASU Foundation Professor of English. “The challenge is staying committed to doing social justice work — the work of humanity — when I am tired, frustrated, disappointed and in need of rejuvenation.

“The struggles for justice continue, but it is inspiring to know that I am not alone in this work and that Dr. King has provided a road map to achieving greater civility and greater service to others and to causes bigger than ourselves.”

Lester will receive an MLK “Living the Dream” Award at the city of Phoenix Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration on Friday. A few days later on Jan. 21, he will accept the Paradise Valley MLK 2019 Diversity Award and deliver the keynote address at a luncheon ceremony.

Already a recipient of the Diversity Leadership Alliance of Arizona Award, Lester believes these new awards underscore his life’s work in raising awareness on social justice issues and encouraging action to combat various forms of inhumanity. Lester said he wants people to better understand and then challenge systems of privilege and unconscious bias that exclude and deny another’s basic humanity. He said his work addresses the –isms in a way that moves beyond the often dismissive “political correctness” and “identity politics.”

Preacher’s kid

Lester said growing up in a rural northeast Georgia community during the civil rights era helped to inform his life’s work. He was mentored by people in his church and school; both communities prepared him to integrate to an all-white elementary school and a life outside the Deep South.

“Neal was an extremely bright young man who was a good writer and had exceptional penmanship,” said 84-year-old Doris Brown, Lester’s fifth-grade science teacher. “He worked well with his classmates. We had no discipline problems with him.”

That’s most likely due to the fact that Lester’s father was a pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and a preacher’s kid was expected to be a good example. Lester says he approaches his classroom and the ASU Project Humanities initiative in much the same way his father successfully pastored his churches — by being welcoming, encouraging and informative.

“My small black church was very much the training ground for the work I do today, but I didn’t realize that until much later,” Lester said. “My church family modeled for me the value of education and provided a multitude of opportunities for me to excel and demonstrate leadership.”

Talking, listening, connecting

That early leadership has been transferred to Project Humanities, a multiple-award-winning initiative that brings together individuals and communities from across Arizona and beyond to instill knowledge of humanities study, public programs and humanist thought. The initiative facilitates critical conversations across diverse communities, building understanding through “talking, listening and connecting.”

Lester formed Project Humanities in 2010 when the economy took a downturn and students were fleeing humanities majors and disciplines. ASU President Michael Crow turned to Lester, then the dean of humanities, with the express charge to make the humanities more robust and enticing. Lester accepted that challenge and set out to create, celebrate and promote public humanities.

“The first order of business was to demystify the humanities and talk about why it’s good for our society,” said Lester, who first put together a weeklong series of events that involved panel discussions and symposia that integrated a cross-section of scholars, professionals and national figures. It went over so well that the following year, the series of humanities-focused programming became monthlong. Today, Project Humanities offers impactful programming year-round.

The second order of business, Lester said, was taking the humanities out of the sometimes-believed-to-be exclusive university setting and going into the various communities. It was a move that endeared him to Valley residents and community leaders alike, and it helped the initiative to develop a strong following.

“Part of the reason for our success is that we don’t come to people as a savior. We say, ‘We want you to be a part of what we’re doing. We want your voices to be vital, and we want to learn from and with you,’” Lester said. “We also don’t want people always coming to us — we go to where they are.”

Project Humanities holds events in community centers, churches, movie theaters, parks, lawns, theaters, restaurants and other civic and art spaces. Topics have included love, romance, autism, death, caregiving, menstrual equity, environmental justice and sustainability, humor, truth, arranged marriages in India, body positivity and the story of historically black colleges and universities.  

And if you go to a Project Humanities program, be prepared to learn something new about yourself and others.

“I don’t want to host a program on something we already know because there has to be an element of discovery we always want attendees to experience,” Lester said. “I’m willing to take a chance on subjects that society doesn’t talk about or necessarily like to talk about.”

That sort of thinking greatly appealed to Scottsdale resident Jackie Rifkin.

“Whether Neal is talking to college students, community leaders or people experiencing homelessness, he encourages dialogue,” said Rifkin, who has volunteered for Project Humanities events for four years and attends many of Lester’s lectures throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area, including Osher Lifelong Learning Institute classes at ASU. “His great strength is that he can relate to anybody regardless of their color (and age). In all his programs, his is constantly questioning: Is there a better way?”

Lester has also inspired John Skinner, vice president and chief of staff for ASU Enterprise Partners, which has sponsored several Project Humanities events.

“I’ve been a fan of Neal Lester’s since the day I met him several years ago,” Skinner said. “He has inspired me and so many others to grow beyond our current worldviews and preconceived notions. Dr. Lester, through his work at ASU and beyond, is a gift to humanity.”

New gift for the humanities

The Come Rain or Shine Foundation also recognizes Lester's impact. The group recently donated $25,000 to Project Humanities to put into action a new parenting and humanity initiative in 2019.

“Observing Dr. Lester in action within the community sparked our interest in Project Humanities,” said James D. Tuton, who heads up the Come Rain or Shine Foundation along with Michelle Mace. “Dr. Lester has the unique ability to instantaneously create an emotionally safe place for people to connect and share their differing worldviews.”

Mace and Tuton originally connected with Lester through Mace's son Andrew, who invited Lester to dinner. It was there where he asked Lester to give the induction keynote to the Desert Vista High School Rho Kappa Honor Society. Mace and Tuton joined Project Humanity's ongoing homeless outreach and then became intrigued about the annual Hacks for Humanity, a 36-hour “hackathon” for the social good.

What makes this hackathon unique is that it invites and attracts coders and non-coders, artists, humanists, futurists, designers and visionaries who work in teams to create technologies around Humanity 101 values: respect, integrity, compassion, forgiveness, empathy, kindness and self-reflection.

Mace and Tuton have served as opening hackathon keynoters and as mentors for the hackathon for the past two years. In addition to their positive experience with the hackathon, both Mace and Tuton say they never fail to learn something new from Lester every time they interact with him.

“Dr. Lester teaches us to listen for human experiences and understands that the energy required for learning comes from tapping into our own feelings and recognizing the feelings of others,” said Mace, referring to Project Humanities’ Service Saturdays, a homeless outreach started in 2014 in downtown Phoenix.

Every other Saturday, Lester coordinates anywhere from 20 to 60 volunteers in downtown Phoenix to distribute to the homeless various items, including clothes, toiletries, shoes, sandals, backpacks, books and magazines. Lester said this outreach keeps him grounded as he navigate spaces that can often leave him disillusioned, disappointed, discouraged and even too self-focused.

“Stepping out of my personal comfort zone to support others — particularly this very vulnerable community of 150 to 200 adults — is healing,” Lester said. “It also follows the model of Dr. Martin Luther King, who reminds us in his life work of the value of being of service to others.”

Top photo: Neal A. Lester, Foundation Professor of English and founding director of Project Humanities at Arizona State University, poses for a portrait on the balcony of the Student Pavilion on ASU's Tempe campus on Jan. 14. Photo by Deanna Dent/ASU Now

ASU alum helped organize iconic 1963 lunch counter protest that challenged racial segregation in the Deep South

He was a civil rights activist and academic.

The son of a Native American who taught at an all-black college.

A bold demonstrator in the bloody 1963 Woolworth's lunch counter sit-in that focused intense national debate on segregation.

A personal friend and associate of NAACP head Medgar Evers, who was assassinated at his Mississippi home by a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

John Randall Salter Jr., who received two degrees from Arizona State University in the 1950s and 1960s, died Jan. 7 at his home in Pocatello, Idaho, of natural causes. He was 84.  

“Beyond alumni, beyond student and teacher, beyond any label we might have, we are all humans,” said ASU President Michael M. Crow. “And to stand up for your fellow humans, to take the hard path and challenge the status quo, to say, ‘This is wrong’ and then do something about it — this is an example of greatness. The ASU community has lost a true changemaker in John R. Salter.”

Social justice warrior

Though a lifelong social justice activist, Salter’s defining moment occurred in his late 20s when he answered the call by NAACP State Field Secretary Medgar Evers to join several students from Mississippi’s historically black Tougaloo College at a segregated lunch counter inside the F.W. Woolworth’s retail store on Capitol Street in downtown Jackson. The May 28, 1963, controversy erupted in chaos and violence when activists ordered service.

The peaceful protesters were taunted and brutalized by a hostile mob, who doused them with sugar, mustard and ketchup. Many of the women were pulled off their stools by their hair while the men were brutally beaten — some knocked unconscious and taken to the hospital. Salter later recalled in interviews that he had been attacked with brass knuckles and broken glass. He also had cigarettes stubbed out on his back and neck, leaving permanent scars.

John Richard Salter Jr. at a Blair Street A.M.E. Church in Jackson, Mississippi, where he spoke to the congregation in his torn and bloody shirt in the early 1960s. Photo courtesy of HunterBear.org

"We learned later that local radio stations were encouraging people to go there and participate in mob activity," Salter recalled in a 2015 article for The Guardian, a British daily newspaper. "All the while the air was filled with obscenities, the N-word — it was a lavish display of unbridled hatred."

The taunting and torment went on for three hours before police grudgingly ended the protest, mostly to prevent damage to the store when the mob began throwing merchandise.  

A photo taken by Fred Blackwell of the Jackson Daily News forever preserved the moment in history and was later used in various teaching textbooks.

In Jackson, Salter earned the nickname "Mustard Man" because the photo showed him drenched in condiments. 

The Woolworth's demonstration made worldwide headlines, and two weeks later President John F. Kennedy used the flashpoint as a rallying call for a comprehensive national civil rights bill. That same night, Evers was struck in the back of the head by a bullet fired by an assassin’s rifle.

It was Salter who appealed through a telephone call to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. to come to Jackson for Evers’ funeral. King immediately agreed and ended up leading a procession of 5,000 people.

Salter published a book in 1979 about his civil rights experiences called “Jackson, Mississippi: An American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism.” The book was revised and updated in 2011 by Bison Books/University of Nebraska Press.

Unsung hero of the civil rights movement

ASU's Neal A. Lester called Salter an unsung hero and an inspiring figure.

“Mr. Salter’s story is a reminder that unsung heroes for justice are always among us. To put a face and story with the iconic Woolworth’s sit-in photograph, especially someone with an Arizona connection, is refreshing,” said Lester, professor of English and director of Project Humanities. “Too often our American history relegates such icons and iconic moments to the Deep South. That Mr. Salter was an educator who joined his students in protest is inspiring. He modeled the risk-taking that is so fundamental to demonstrating our own humanity and each other’s.”

Salter graduated high school in 1951 and served a stint in the Army. He pursued his undergraduate degree in social studies from Arizona State University and graduated in 1958 — the same year the institution was officially recognized as a state university. Two years later he received a master’s degree in sociology. While at ASU, he organized student groups and did volunteer work for the International Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, among other groups.

He continued his work as a labor union organizer before moving to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1961 with his wife, Eldri Johanson. Salter was an assistant professor at Tougaloo College and also served as an adviser to the Jackson Youth Council of the NAACP and as an executive committee of the Jackson NAACP, working closely with Evers.

Salter quickly became a civil rights leader and community organizer. He and his wife helped organize boycotts of several businesses that practiced discrimination in downtown Jackson. He said he was beaten and ridiculed on numerous occasions for his activism in the Deep South — by both unruly mobs and police. Weeks after the Woolworth's clash he was seriously injured with a colleague when his car was wrecked in what he believed was a rigged automobile accident. He was also the subject of several smear campaigns and was surveilled by the FBI, which compiled a large dossier on him.

“It helps to have, as I have since the hatch, a thick skull and a thick hide,” Salter wrote on his website.

A life of activism and the classroom

Salter’s career was a mix of teaching and activism, which took him around the country. He organized several grassroots events on social justice, poverty, literacy, youth activity and labor and held teaching posts at Superior State College in Wisconsin; Navajo Community College (now Diné College) in Tsaile, Arizona; Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont; Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; the University of Iowa; and the University of North Dakota. Salter also taught and developed courses for the American Indian Cultural Center at the Iowa State Penitentiary.

He retired as a full professor and former departmental chair from the American Indian Studies Department at the University of North Dakota, where he worked from 1981 to 1994. Salter changed his name in 1995 to John Hunter Gray to honor his Native American roots.

Salter moved to Pocatello, Idaho, after retirement and remained involved in various civil rights campaigns until his death.

"Mr. Salter's life and his actions remind us that turmoil around the rights of others is everyone's challenge. That he stood up — or, in this case, sat down — for the rights of others demonstrates courage and a commitment to justice," said Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, President’s Professor, director of the Center for Indian Education and ASU’s special adviser to the president on American Indian affairs. "While some may boil his activism down to this moment at the lunch counter, it is obvious that Mr. Salter spent his life engaged in acts of social justice. In so many ways, he embodies the spirit of the New American University by accepting the responsibility of helping create a better, healthier society. May he rest in peace and power."

Top photo: John R. Salter Jr. (seated left and in the foreground) helped organize the May 28, 1963, Woolworth's sit-in demonstration in Jackson, Mississippi. The civil rights activist was a product of Arizona State University, where he received his undergraduate in 1958 and a master's degree in sociology in 1960. Photo courtesy of the Jackson Daily News