An author whose work helped spark a grassroots movement to address economic distress in Goldsboro and Wayne County will speak at Wayne Community College this coming Monday.
Gene Nichol, the law professor who wrote The Faces of Poverty in North Carolina: Stories from Our Invisible Citizens, will speak at 7 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 14. It will be held in Room 101 of the Walnut Building on the college’s main campus in Goldsboro.
Nichol will explore the challenges of poverty in this state through the stories of those living with intense economic hardship. He will also examine poverty and economic segregation.
Nichol will draw on interviews he conducted with residents living in Wayne County’s poorest neighborhoods. Those conversations resulted in the “Goldsboro: Isolation and Marginalization in Eastern North Carolina” chapter in The Faces of Poverty book which was published in 2018 by The University of North Carolina Press.
Nichol is the Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law. He was director of the UNC Poverty Center from 2008 to 2015. Since 2015, his research has been supported by the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund.
Nichol wrote about this intentions in researching and writing The Faces of Poverty in the book’s preface: “This book … looks pointedly and purposefully at the people and places of one state, my own, North Carolina. … I hope that we might return the conditions, the prospects, and the possibilities of the bottom economic third — the poor and the nearly poor — to our shared and urgent public agenda. In the process, the wounds of body and spirit visited on our sisters and brothers by wrenching poverty might be ameliorated. At the same time, I hope we might draw closer to the type of state, and nation, we constantly claim we seek to be.”
The Foundation of Wayne Community College is a non-profit organization that works to broaden the base of community support for educational opportunities at the college. It awarded 558 scholarships worth nearly $382,000 in the 2018-2019 academic year. In addition to providing financial support to students, the Foundation funds mini grants and employee recognition, and offers cultural programs for the community. For more information about the Foundation, go to www.waynecc.edu/foundation.
Wayne Community College is a public, learning-centered institution with an open-door admission policy located in Goldsboro, N.C. As it works to develop a highly skilled and competitive workforce, the college serves 11,000 individuals annually as well as businesses, industry, and community organizations with high quality, affordable, accessible learning opportunities, including more than 140 college credit programs. WCC’s mission is to meet the educational, training, and cultural needs of the communities it serves.
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