I remember Martin Luther King, Jr. day at Northern Nevada Correctional Center in 1989, because that is the day my husband Clifton Maclin was their guest speaker. I had only worked in the prison as a doctor for two years when one of the black inmates on the yard asked me if my husband would be the speaker for the event, as their scheduled speaker with the NAACP had cancelled and they couldn’t find a replacement. I still remember what my husband, who had a MBA in finance, said when I asked him. –“Why me?” I replied, “Because you’re black.”
That was significant in Carson City, NV in those years because there were less than 1% in the city who could claim that distinction. I’m proud to say that not only was his speech a success, the inmates from all different ethnic groups in the prison asked him to teach in the college programs they had at that time. He was also one of the prison’s longest acting volunteers putting in over 25 years. Here he is as a guest lecturer at Harvard University in 2017.