Best-Selling Author Wes Moore to Speak at FSU (1502 hits)

New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author Wes Moore will speak at Fayetteville State University (FSU) on February 3, 2015, at 3 p.m. in J.W. Seabrook Auditorium. At 6 p.m., that day, Moore will speak and hold a question and answer session in the Rudolph Jones Student Center Room 240-242. The events are part of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Speaker Series and are co-sponsored by the Partnership for Children of Cumberland County, Dr. and Mrs. Eric Mansfield, the Fayetteville Regional Chamber of Commerce, and The Fayetteville Publishing Company. Both are free and open to the public.

Moore is a youth advo­cate, Army com­bat vet­eran, social entre­pre­neur, and host of “Beyond Belief” on the Oprah Win­frey Net­work. His first book “The Other Wes Moore” became an instant bestseller. The book was required reading for FSU’s incoming freshmen in fall 2014.

The book outlines an interesting occurrence in Moore’s life. In Decem­ber 2000, the Bal­ti­more Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local stu­dent who had just received a Rhodes Schol­ar­ship. The same paper also ran a series of arti­cles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police offi­cer in a spec­tac­u­larly botched armed rob­bery. The police were still hunt­ing for two of the sus­pects who had gone on the lam, a pair of broth­ers. One was named Wes Moore.

Moore just couldn’t shake off the unset­tling coin­ci­dence, or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the same news­pa­per. After fol­low­ing the story of the rob­bery, the man­hunt, and the trial to its con­clu­sion, he wrote a let­ter to the other Moore, now a con­victed mur­derer serv­ing a life sen­tence with­out the pos­si­bil­ity of parole. His let­ter ten­ta­tively asked the ques­tions that had been haunt­ing him: Who are you? How did this happen?

That let­ter led to a cor­re­spon­dence and rela­tion­ship that has lasted for sev­eral years. Over dozens of let­ters and prison vis­its, Moore dis­cov­ered that the other Moore had a life; not unlike his own. Both had grown up in sim­i­lar neigh­bor­hoods and had dif­fi­cult child­hoods, both were father­less; they’d hung out on sim­i­lar cor­ners with sim­i­lar crews, and both had run into trou­ble with the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come across sim­i­lar moments of deci­sion, yet their choices and the peo­ple in their lives would lead them to aston­ish­ingly dif­fer­ent destinies.

FSU is a constituent institution of The University of North Carolina and the second-oldest public institution of higher education in the state. FSU offers nearly 60 degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels. With more than 5,000 students, Fayetteville State University is among the most diverse institutions in the nation.

The Partnership for Children of Cumberland County (PFC) is the nonprofit organization that supports early care and education professionals and parents with resources to prepare children for success in school and nurture responsible, productive citizens who will make a positive contribution to the community. PFC achieves its mission through administration of the Smart Start school readiness initiative and NC Pre-kindergarten program in Cumberland County as well as several other grants.

For more information regarding Wes Moore’s appearances, call (910) 672-1474.

Source: http://www.uncfsu.edu/

Posted By: Cheer Leader
Tuesday, January 27th 2015 at 3:31PM
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