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McMillan to keynote Humanities Honors Day reception

Amanda McMillan, a women’s rights advocate from Jackson, will keynote the Humanities Honors Day Reception April 23 at 4:45 p.m. in the Leroy Morganti Atrium.

The Division of Languages & Literature and the Division of Social Sciences & History at Delta State welcomes the campus community to the Humanities Honors Day Reception April 23 beginning at 4:45 p.m. in the Leroy Morganti Atrium of Kent Wyatt Hall.

The event serves as a ceremony to honor the academic achievements of Delta State students, with recognition going to a wide variety of majors.

Keynoting this year’s event is Amanda McMillan, a women’s rights advocate from Jackson, Miss. and a former resident of Cleveland.

After being First Lady Michelle Obama’s special guest at the 2013 State of the Union Address, McMillan has become an activist for the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which was the first bill signed into law by President Barack Obama.

McMillan made history when, with the help of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission EEOC, she successfully sued the Forrest City Grocery Company for sex discrimination. The lawsuit charged that the company denied McMillan a sales position because she was a woman and paid her less than men doing the same work.

When asked why she pursued the case, McMillan said, “I’m doing this because it was wrong, and I could never look my girls in the face, and then tell them they live in America, and could be anything they wanted to be.”

As a result of the suit, Forrest City Grocery agreed to pay $125,000 in monetary damages.

She has appeared in national news sources like The Washington Post, The New York Times, Cosmopolitan Magazine and on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. In the last 14 months, she has been a special guest of the White House three times, and was recently a panelist on pay equity for the Center for American Progress. 

McMillan currently works at Seafood R’evolution in Ridgeland, Miss. and is also a full time student at Hinds Community College. She has taken classes at Delta State University in the past.

In addition, she is the proud mother of three children. Troy is a 26-year-old Delta State graduate, and will be introducing her keynote speech; Elaine, 18, is a student at Mississippi State; and Caroline, who, in the words of her mother, “is an amazing third grader here in Cleveland at Presbyterian Day School.”

For more information on the event, contact 662-846-4060.