MONROE, LA– The University of Louisiana Monroe Cultural Diversity Council and the Office of Global and Multicultural Affairs present “A Black History Program: African Americans and Labor” at 10 a.m. on Friday, February 21, at Bayou Pointe Event Center.
The program will feature keynote speaker Courtney T. Joiner. Joiner is a professor and an experienced litigator with a distinguished career in both academia and the courtroom. A former Assistant United States Attorney for the Department of Justice, Joiner takes pride in his strategic and innovative approach to solving clients’ legal challenges.
Joiner currently focuses his practice on labor and employment law, education law, and complex civil litigation. Joiner earned both his B.A. and M.A. in Criminal Justice from the University of Louisiana at Monroe, where he was also a student-athlete, competing in football and track. He went on to receive his J.D. from Southern University Law Center in 2007, serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Southern University Law Review. Joiner also currently serves as an adjunct instructor in the ULM Criminal Justice department.
"The Black History Program is essential to our campus because it fosters a deeper understanding of the rich cultural contributions, resilience, and achievements of black communities. It creates a space for reflection, celebration, and dialogue, helping us build a more inclusive and informed campus community," said Gina White, Director of the ULM Office of Global and Multicultural Affairs.
This year’s Black History Month theme is “African Americans and Labor.” According to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, “The 2025 Black History Month theme, “African Americans and Labor”, focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people.” The ASALH website continues, “The theme intends to encourage broad reflections on intersections between Black people’s work and their workplaces in all their iterations and key moments, themes, and events in Black history and culture across time and space and throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora.” Learn more at https://asalh.org/black-history-themes/