Dr. Robert Allen, author, scholar and university professor of African American and Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, will be the keynote speaker at a gala banquet celebrating the Friends of the College Library's tenth anniversary on June 26.

The event will take place at the Bermuda Room of the Elbow Beach hotel beginning at 7 p.m. Tickets ($100) are available from Daurene Aubrey at 239-4034.

On June 25 Dr. Allen will read from his American Book Award-winning book, 'Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America ? An Anthology', which contains selections from slave narratives, memoirs, biographies, poems, essays and stories, all told in a distinctly black-male voice. This event will take place in the Bermuda College library beginning at 7 p.m. and admission is free.

Dr. Allen, who holds a Ph.D in sociology from the University of California at San Francisco, has taught classes on racial inequality in America; introduction to African American life and culture; black nationalism; black politics in the United States, and the social movements of the 1960s.

In the early 1980s he was head of the ethnic studies department at Mills College in Oakland, California, and also taught courses as an assistant professor in: ethnic heritage in America; racism and capitalism; social movements of the 60s; race and social reform movements in US history; and black history.

He has authored several books, including 'Black Awakening in Capitalist in America', Reluctant Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in the US', and the award-winning 'The Port Chicago Mutiny: The Story of the Largest Mutiny Trial in US History', which he co-edited with Herb Boyd. 'Brotherman' was the winner of an American Book Award and a non-fiction award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

Two documentaries have been made based on 'The Port Chicago Mutiny': one on the Learning Channel and the other on a San Francisco channel. There was also a made-for-television film starring Morgan Freeman.

As a 22-year-old college student, Dr. Allen was in the audience at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York when civil rights activist Malcolm X was assassinated a few feet away from him.

"Malcolm X coming to speak at Morehouse College, where I was a student, got me to thinking about the struggle because I hadn't made any real connection to it, but hearing him speak for the first time galvanised me. He was such an incredible orator and incredible teacher.

"He spoke directly to you, and had a wonderful sense of humour. On the few times I heard him in New York before his death and witnessing his assassination just totally turned me around," the professor told during his visit two years ago.