Michele Norris unable to visit Elon for MLK keynote address on Jan. 10

Due to a scheduling conflict, former National Public Radio correspondent Michele Norris will not visit Elon Jan. 10 as planned for her Martin Luther King Jr. Keynote Address about America’s conversation on race. 

Norris has received a special invitation to attend President Barack Obama’s farewell address that same day in Chicago’s McCormick Place as he winds down his term in office. Norris’s husband, Broderick Johnson, was a senior adviser during Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign and since 2014 has been an assistant to the president and White House cabinet secretary. 

Norris, former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” was scheduled to speak at Elon about the experiences and insights she has gained working on The Race Card Project, an initiative she launched in 2010 while a correspondent with NPR to help spur candid conversations about attitudes and beliefs toward race in America. The project focuses around asking people to use six words to summarize their thoughts and experiences about race, with the words offered on postcards, in emails or tweets. 

To coincide with Norris’s planned visit, Elon has undertaken its own Race Card Project, with students submitting their own six-word stories about race throughout the fall semester. Those stories have been collected and will be displayed as an art installation in the Isabella Cannon Room in the Center for the Arts through mid-February. 

A scheduled reception focusing on the Elon Race Card Project installation will still be held from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on Jan. 10, and will offer attendees the opportunity to create their own stories to be included in the installation. Norris’s visit to Elon will not be rescheduled.