Award winning author and social scientist Dr. Bobby J. Smith II, Associate Professor, Department of African American Studies, University of Illinois, will give the inaugural lecture in a new series, the College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Lecture series. His title is “L. C. Dorsey’s Emancipatory Vision: Food, Power, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi” on April 10, 2025. His lecture challenges us to reconsider how we think and talk about food. Drawing on research from his award-winning book, Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (UNC Press, 2023), Dr. Smith narrates how food emerged as a contested site of Black freedom during the American Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. He focuses on the emancipatory vision of Mrs. L. C. Dorsey, a woefully forgotten civil rights activist, and her role as the leader of the North Bolivar County Farm Cooperative, an innovative local Black food network of activists, community members, healthcare professionals, and farmers. Smith shows how Dorsey and the cooperative network used the civil rights movement as incubator for the creation of innovative food systems. Looking forward, such food systems provide blueprints for Black food futures—where Black communities have the full autonomy and capacity to imagine, create and sustain a self-sufficient local food system designed by them.