ACC College Lecture Series: Life and Career of Harvey Milk Feb. 17 (Feb. 05, 2010) -

QUEENSBURY – Adirondack Community College English professor Peter Marino will give a talk on the life and career of Harvey Milk on Wed., Feb. 17, at 3:30 p.m. in Miller Auditorium, Dearlove Hall, as part of ACC’s College Lecture Series.

Admission is free and the public is invited. A question and answer session will follow the talk.

Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He and San Francisco mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White in November 1978.

Milk, a graduate of SUNY Albany and a native of Long Island, was the subject of an award-winning movie in 2008 starring Sean Penn in the title role.

“Mainstream America has plenty of household name heroes, but minorities have heroes, too – often people who have take enormous risks and possibly lost their lives, and these heroes are often unsung by the general public,” says Marino. “Until ‘Milk’ came out, most of America did not know the importance of Harvey Milk’s short political life.”

Marino’s presentation will review Milk’s origins and career, and explain why a lowly city supervisor became an icon for a civil rights movement.

Marino is the author of acclaimed young adult novels “Dough Boy” (Holiday House, 2005) and “Magic and Misery” (Holiday House, 2009). “Dough Boy” was nominated for the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults list in 2006, and “Magic and Misery” was nominated for the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults list in 2009 and is on Booklist’s Top 10 Romance Fiction for Youth: 2009. His third novel, as yet untitled, will be published in 2011.

The College Lecture Series is coordinated by the ACC Professional Development Committee.

For more information on this program, please call Joyce Miller, professor of library science, at 743-2200, extension 2485.

-30-