Contact: James Carskadon

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State University benefactor and former Rhode Island Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Williams will present a lecture Feb. 26 on “Ulysses S. Grant, Reconstruction, and Civil Rights” at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson.

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History is presenting the free event in association with MSU’s Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library. The Mississippi Humanities Council is co-sponsoring the event, which will include a reception at 5 p.m., followed by the lecture at 6 p.m. in the Museum’s House of Representatives chamber.

Williams, a noted historian and longtime president of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, was instrumental in bringing the Grant Presidential Library to MSU in 2009. In 2017, Williams and his wife, Virginia, donated their collection of Abraham Lincoln and Civil War memorabilia, valued at nearly $3 million, to the university, making MSU one of the nation’s leading centers for study of the American Civil War.

Williams is a graduate of Boston University and Boston University Law School, and earned a Master of Taxation degree from Bryant University. A longtime jurist in the Rhode Island court system, he served on the state’s Superior Court beginning in 1995 before ascending to the Supreme Court bench in 2001, serving as chief justice until his retirement in 2009.

For more information on the Feb. 26 lecture, call 601-576-6998 or email info@mdah.ms.gov.

MSU is one of six U.S. universities to house a presidential library. For more, visit www.usgrantlibrary.org.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.