Supreme Court Justice Alan Page to speak April 16 Ethnic Studies lecture

2010-03-15 Minnesota State University, Mankato Media Relations Office news release [3/12/2010]

Alan Page, Minnesota’s first African-American Supreme Court justice, will talk about “The Importance of Education” Friday, April 16, at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Page’s talk, sponsored by the Ethnic Studies Department, will be from noon until 1 p.m. in Room 284 of Centennial Student Union. His lecture is free and open to students, faculty, staff and the public.

Justice Alan Page 18 February 2009 This file is licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 1.0 License.

Page, renowned for his quarterback sacks as the star defensive end for the “Purple-People-Eater” Minnesota Vikings of the 1970s, reinvented his career after retiring from football. He was the NFL’s Most Valuable Player in 1971, but attended the University of Minnesota Law School while playing, earning a juris doctor in 1978. In the early 1980s, after retiring, he worked for a Minneapolis law firm, then was appointed special assistant attorney general and then assistant attorney general for Minnesota. In 1992 he was elected to an open seat on the Minnesota Supreme Court, becoming the court’s first African-American associate justice.

In 1998 he was re-elected as the biggest Supreme Court vote-getter in Minnesota history, and was re-elected again in 2004.

Page and his wife Diane founded the Page Education Foundation, which has awarded post-secondary education grants to thousands of minority youth. He is a devoted marathon runner; he completed the Edmund Fitzgerald 100-k Road Race in Duluth, and regularly watches the Twin Cities Marathon, playing the tuba near mile 3.

Minnesota State Mankato, a comprehensive, doctoral university with 14,950 students, is part of the Minnesota State Colleges & Universities system, which comprises 32 institutions across the state.

Minnesota State University · Mankato, Minnesota 56001 · United States of America · Tel: 1-800-722-0544