For more information, contact James Jolly, director of marketing and communications, at 843.383.8018

Hartsville, S.C. — Coker College's African American Studies and Spanish American Studies programs are sponsoring a forum entitled “The Social and Economic Impact of Diversity” on Thursday, November 17 at 7:00 p.m. in Davidson Hall's C.W. Coker Auditorium on campus. Admission is free and the public is invited to attend.

The forum’s panelists will be Maria Smoak of the South Carolina Hispanic Leadership Council, James McLawhorn of the Columbia, South Carolina Urban League, and Yoshikyo Tabata of Showa Products Company.

Smoak, a Cuban American, currently serves as the director of the Hispanic Ministries at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Columbia. A founding member and past president of the South Carolina Hispanic Leadership Council, Smoak has witnessed first hand the growth, impact and issues of the Latino community in the state. She is president of MGSmoak & Associates, a consulting firm that delivers and develops seminars and presentation and provides document translation for a variety of companies and organizations.

McLawhorn has been the chief executive of the Columbia, South Carolina Urban League since 1979. He has created numerous youth programs that employ thousands of teens each year, and, in 1999, the National Urban League voted him President of the Decade. A recipient of the Order of the Palmetto, the state’s highest civilian honor, McLawhorn was one of the chief planners of the January 2000 King Day at the Dome which drew over 60,000 people to Columbia to protest the flying of the Confederate flag atop the statehouse. It was one of the largest civil rights demonstrations in the history of South Carolina. McLawhorn is also the founder the national Black Family Summit, an annual action forum on family issues.

Tabata is section chief of the paper tube group for Showa Products Company, a 40-year old joint venture between global packaging firms Sonoco Products Company and Showa Marutsutsu. As Showa’s representative at Sonoco’s corporate headquarters in Hartsville, Tabata serves as a technology engineer in the Industrial Packaging Division Global Technology Group. Showa Marutsutsu is located in Higashi-Osaka City, Japan.

Coker College offers a minor in Spanish American Studies and a specialization in African American Studies.

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November 7, 2005