JOPLIN, MO (SNS) The Fourteenth Annual Langston Hughes Celebration will take place at 7 p.m., Friday Feb. 24 in Webster Hall Auditorium at MSSU.

The featured speaker will be Carmaletta Williams, associate professor of English at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kan. Williams will speak on the topic "Mother to Son: the Letters of Langston and Carrie Hughes."

She has an essay on this topic coming out in the near future in a book of critical studies on the Joplin-born writer. She is the author of Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me: Langston Hughes in the Classroom.

The evening will also include performances of poetry and music and a drawing for children under age 12 to win three picture book biographies of Langston Hughes, poet, playwright and social commentator who was born in Joplin in 1902.

Carmaletta Williams has won a number of distinguished teaching awards including the Burlington Northern-Sante Faculty Achievement Award, two Distinguished Service Awards from Johnson County Community College and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching,

She has been the recipient of the Kansas Professor of the Year award, and the League for Innovation's Innovation of the Year award for her videotape Sankofa: My Journey Home. This video was a result of her Fulbright-Hays Award for study in Ghana, West Africa.

Williams recently returned from West Africa, where she established a faculty exchange between L'Ecole Nationale de Poste et Telecommunications and Johnson County Community College.

The event, co-sponsored by the Joplin NAACP, is free and open to the public.

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