UPDATED: Nov. 12, 2015 at 5:41 p.m.

After three Virginia Liquor agents pinned and arrested University of Virginia student Martese Johnson, footage of Martese bleeding from a gash in his face sparked outrage and led to student protests.

About eight months after the incident, Martese will be the keynote speaker for the Syracuse University NAACP Blacktivism Conference on Saturday in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Martese, along with speakers and activists from all over the United States, will be speaking on the subject of blacktivism, which is defined as the conscious action, support and involvement in creating political, social and economic change for people of the African diaspora, according to the conference’s website.

The idea for the event came from a similar conference held by Harvard University last year, said Olivia Johnson, the president of the SU NAACP unit and a senior newspaper and online journalism, African American Studies and political science triple major.

“We wanted to bring awareness and encourage, celebrate and discuss black activism,” said Johnson, a staff writer for The Daily Orange.

She added that members of the SU NAACP felt the conference was needed at SU due to several incidents she said were racist, including recorded remarks by former SU women’s soccer player Hanna Strong and racist comments on the anonymous mobile app Yik Yak, among other incidents.

“We want (students) to know it’s OK to be an activist — even more OK to be a black activist,” Johnson said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

After the Blacktivism Conference was held in October 2014 at Harvard, Johnson said the SU NAACP wanted to start planning in December 2014 for a conference at SU to be held in April 2015.

With the time crunch of only a few months to confirm speakers and the budget for the event, Johnson said the SU NAACP decided to move the event to this Saturday. Olivia said due to budget cuts, the conference was shortened from a three-day event to the one-day event that will begin at 9 a.m. with a welcome breakfast and end at 9 p.m. with the keynote speaker dinner.

A lecture titled “Parallels in Activism” will be held from 10 to 11 a.m., and a series of panels and workshops will follow. A “Looking Forward” panel will be the last event before the keynote speaker dinner, which starts at 7 p.m.

Rochelle Ford, chair of the public relations department in Newhouse, will join Newhouse Dean Lorraine Branham and two other speakers on the “Systemic Racism in the Media” panel, which will be held at 12:15 p.m. on Saturday.

Ford said she is looking forward to a dialogue and hearing what people have to say, and added that she thinks it is important to have conversations about racism in the media because the media have power.

“The media really provides insight into the biases we have toward people,” she said.

Ford said she hopes the conference draws a mix of people to participate and “creates awareness and conversation.”

Herbert Ruffin II, associate professor and webmaster in the African American studies department, is one of the speakers for the panel “The Myth of Radicalism,” which is set to take place on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. Ruffin said he hopes the conference brings awareness so that some steps can be taken for SU to not be led “down a path like the University of Missouri,” which is currently experiencing widespread student protests in response to what protesters are calling a lack of action to racist incidents.

“Hopefully whatever can come from these discussions can bring Syracuse, once again, to the forefront of progressively dealing with race-based issues,” Ruffin said.

Two-hundred fifty tickets were made available for the event. Tickets are currently available for $5 for SU students and for $15 for non-SU students in the Schine Box Office.

Both Johnson and Ruffin said students should bring a notebook and a pen, for what Johnson said will be “a historical event” that is “probably never going to happen again.”

Correction: In a previous version of this article, the number of  majors Olivia Johnson has was misstated. Johnson is a triple major. In addition, Herbert Ruffin was misquoted. The Daily Orange regrets these errors.

Published on November 11, 2015 at 10:18 pm

Contact Katelyn: kmfaubel@syr.edu