Sunday, October 21 – Salem County
James Rupert Announced as the Presenter
for the 15th John Stewart Rock Memorial Lecture
The Salem County Historical Society has announced that James Rupert will be the presenter of “Burnt Crosses: Salem and America in 1967” for the 15th John S. Rock Memorial Lecture to be held on Sunday, October 21, 2018, at the Friends Village, Fenwick Auditorium, One Friends Drive, Woodstown, NJ 08098 at 3:00 P. M. The public is invited to enjoy this free educational program.
James Rupert is a career foreign correspondent and editor. His reporting—from more than 70 countries for The Washington Post and other news organizations—has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
Rupert graduated with honors from Swarthmore College in 1979 and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco. A multilingual journalist, he has covered wars across four decades in Afghanistan, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and conflicts and upheaval in Russia, Ukraine, Bosnia, Iraq and the Middle East, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Back in the United States since 2012, Rupert has served at foreign policy think tanks in Washington, DC. He now works at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
As part of the society’s educational programming, this lecture commemorates the life of abolitionist John Stewart Rock (1826–1866), teacher, healer, and counselor. Rock, born in Salem County, was a black abolitionist of national prominence, who was well known in his time but less recognized in ours. He was the first African American to be admitted to the Bar of the United States Supreme Court on February 1, 1865.The Society continues to honor the life of this native son through this lecture series and through a special John Stewart Rock Memorial Scholarship of $500 at the Salem Community College. Contributions from the community at large fund both commemorations through a restricted fund at the Salem County Historical Society.