DATE CHANGED FOR MARTIN LUTHER KING LECTURE FEATURING HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.

Old Dominion's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Observance Lecture featuring African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., originally scheduled for Jan. 18, has been rescheduled.

The lecture will be at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 27, in the North Cafeteria of Webb University Center. A book signing will follow the lecture. The evening starts with a candlelight vigil at 7 p.m. on Kaufman Mall. The events are free and open to the public.

Gates is the director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research and the DuBois Professor of Humanities at Harvard University. Under his leadership, Harvard's black studies department was revived after languishing some 20 years.

He is the author of several books, including "13 Ways of Looking at a Black Man" (1997), "Colored People: A Memoir" (1994) and "Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars" (1992).

Gates was a key force behind the creation of Microsoft's Encarta Africana, a CD-ROM encyclopedia featuring more than 3,000 articles and 2,500 videos, audio clips, maps and photos about African-American personalities, history and events. Gates also hosted the PBS program "Wonders of the African World."

He is the general editor of the "Norton Anthology of African-American Literature" and has edited and co-edited many other books and journals. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker and has published pieces in many other magazines.

For more information about the lecture, call 683-3116.