DECATUR, Ill. – Millikin University is pleased to welcome award-winning racial justice and civil rights activist Linda Sarsour for its Women’s History Month and Spring 2025 T.W. Samuels Lecture on Thursday, March 27, 2025, at 7 p.m. in the Bob & Debi Johnston Banquet Rooms in the University Commons.
Sarsour will present the lecture, “The Intersectionality of Racism, Sexism and Xenophobia.” The lecture is free and open to the public.
Sarsour is an award-winning racial justice and civil rights activist, seasoned community organizer, direct action strategist, and mother of three. Ambitious, outspoken, and independent, she shatters stereotypes of Muslim women while also treasuring her religious and ethnic heritage.
Sarsour is a Palestinian Muslim American and a self-proclaimed “pure New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn!” She co-founded the first Muslim online organizing platform, MPower Change, and was co-founder of Until Freedom, an intersectional racial justice organization focused on direct action and power building in communities of color. Until Freedom is best known for its work on the Breonna Taylor police murder case in Louisville, Kentucky.
She was one of the national co-chairs of the largest single-day protest in US history, the Women’s March on Washington. Sarsour has been named among 500 of the most influential Muslims in the world. She was recognized as one of Fortune’s 50 Greatest Leaders and featured as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.
Sarsour was the youngest woman and first Muslim to receive the Margaret Brent Medal at St. Mary’s College. She has been honored by dozens of local and national entities, including the New York Women’s Foundation, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, The New York City Council, President Barack Obama, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, The Black Institute, NAACP New York Conference, the Ms. Foundation amongst others.
She is the author of “We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love & Resistance,” published by Simon & Schuster.
About the T.W. Samuels Lecture Series
The T. W. Samuels Lecture Series was created in 1977 in honor of attorney T.W. Samuels, senior partner in the Decatur law firm of Samuels, Miller, Schroeder, Jackson and Sly. Samuels was active in Decatur community affairs until his death in 1989 at age 103. Samuels’ sons, William J. Samuels of Menlo Park, Calif., and the late Dr. Thomas W. Samuels Jr., then created an endowment fund to finance the series in recognition of their father. The endowment is used to bring great thinkers and speakers to Millikin for the purpose of community enrichment.
