PINE BLUFF -- U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., will be the keynote speaker at the Dove Freedom Fund Banquet scheduled on Oct. 8.
The annual event, presented by the NAACP's Pine Bluff Branch, is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. at the Pine Bluff Convention Center, One Convention Center Plaza in Pine Bluff.
Davis, 75, was born in Parkdale, a town in Ashley County in the southeast corner of Arkansas, and grew up on a cotton farm.
He earned a bachelor's degree from Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College, now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, in 1961. That year, he moved to Chicago.
He earned a master's degree from Chicago State University in 1968, and a doctorate from the Union Institute in Cincinnati in 1977.
Davis worked as a teacher in Chicago's public schools from 1962-69 and as a health care planner there from 1969-79.
He also entered politics in Chicago.
He was on the Chicago City Council from 1979-90, representing the 29th Ward about 10 miles west of Lake Michigan.
Davis was elected to Congress on Nov. 5, 1996. He is in his 10th term. Davis represents people who live in the 7th Congressional District, an area from the Chicago lakefront to Interstate 294, including downtown Chicago, the city's West Side, parts of the city's South Side and the near-western suburbs outside Chicago.
Tickets for the Dove Freedom Fund Banquet are $40 per person and are available from the Pine Bluff Convention Center at (870) 536-7600. Tables are $400 and are available from Dorothy Oliver at (870) 850-0107.
Metro on 09/19/2016