COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A history scholar from North Carolina State University is the keynote speaker at a symposium in Columbia on the media and civil rights history.

The School of Journalism and Mass Communications is hosting Katherine Mellen Charron at the three-day event that begins Thursday.

Charron is the author of a biography of Septima Poinsette Clark, a South Carolina public school teacher who developed a citizenship training program in the 1950s that got thousands of African Americans to register to vote. She speaks on Friday.

The symposium brings together civil rights and media historians as they share information about the relationships between civil rights movements and various types of public communication.