Everything Nac

Join Stephen F. Austin State University’s SFA Gardens for a free outdoor skills family adventure day from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Oct. 19, at the Pineywoods Native Plant Center located at 2900 Raguet St.

Families are invited to hone or try out new outdoor skills with a team of trained SFA student leaders from the SFA Gardens environmental education program. Participants will learn a variety of outdoor skills through hands-on activities, including archery target practice for all ages, making and tasting Dutch oven treats and old-fashioned frozen yogurt, guided tree identification hikes, compass and orienteering games, creating plaster animals tracks, educational games that encourage leave no trace principles and more.

The SFA Gardens’ environmental education program, Nacogdoches Naturally, is the recipient of the Community Outdoor Outreach Program grant from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which provides funding for hosting free, family events that introduce new and diverse audiences to the outdoors.

Event parking is available at the PNPC and Raguet Elementary. For more information, call Jocelyn Moore, assistant education coordinator for SFA Gardens, at (936) 468-1863 or email moorejv@sfasu.edu.

Stephen F. Austin State University’s award-winning timbersports team, the Sylvans, invites members of the community to see if they have what it takes to be a lumberjack or lumberjill at the 2019 Lumberjack Games, which will be held during SFA’s Homecoming from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 26.

Dr. Jeremy Stovall, professor of forestry and the Sylvans faculty advisor, said campuswide lumberjack competitions were held in the past, but they have not taken place for at least a decade.

“From what we’ve heard, the original events had pretty diverse participation from all across campus,” Stovall said. “We’re trying to revive that SFA tradition.”

Teams of five will compete in a range of timbersports, including the axe throw, single and double crosscut sawing, caber toss and tug of war. Single individuals also may sign up as a free agent and be assigned to a team.

“A lot of people come to SFA and aren’t sure what it really means to be a lumberjack or don’t know SFA has a timbersports team,” said John Mike Arnett, forestry senior and Sylvans president. “I think it’s a great way to get our names out there and let people experience what it is like to be a lumberjack.”

Timbersports experience is not necessary, and members of the Sylvans will be on site to provide coaching and answer questions. Safety gear and equipment also will be provided.

The event will serve as a fundraiser for the Sylvans, with the potential to support other student organizations within the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture, based on funds generated through registration.

Cash prizes will be awarded to the top teams, as well as a custom-made wood-burned trophy.

The Lumberjack Games will take place behind the Forestry Building, located at 419 East College St. For more information on the games, as well as how to register, visit www.sfasu.edu/lumberjackgames.

Story by Sarah Fuller, outreach coordinator for Stephen F. Austin State University’s Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture. Contact information: (936) 468-1185 or fullersa@sfasu.edu.

In constant search of new ways to highlight campus diversity, Stephen F. Austin State University’s Office of Multicultural Affairs has added a new event to its fall semester slate that will celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.

In honor of National Coming Out Day, which takes place Friday, Oct. 11, the OMA will host a “celebration to promote LGBTQ+ diversity and inclusion and raise awareness about the community to SFA and Nacogdoches residents,” according to Tegan Mingo, OMA student ambassador.

In partnership with the Lumberjack Multicultural Association, SFA’s Residence Life Department and Pride Nac, OMA’s celebration will provide food and entertainment while educating the community about accessible health services, safe spaces and more.

The national event began Oct. 11, 1988, exactly one year after half a million people participated in the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, according to the Human Rights Campaign website.

“National Coming Out Day is an annual LGBTQ+ awareness day that allows individuals to have the space and opportunity to come out, if they so choose,” Mingo said. “Locally, this event will be of significance because we are in a rural, conservative city and can promote inclusiveness so that the LGBTQ+ community feels welcomed and can be themselves in Nacogdoches. Celebrating this day shows we are allies and fully support the LGBTQ+ community.”

The free, public event will be from 1 to 4 p.m. Oct. 11, at SFA’s Ag Pond. It will include a picnic, yard games, group activities, and an educational segment covering health issues, labels and history about the LGBTQ+ community.

For more information about OMA’s slate of fall events, visit sfasu.edu/oma.

By Christine Broussard, editorial marketing communications coordinator at Stephen F. Austin State University.

Stephen F. Austin State University’s East Texas Historical Association will host civil rights activist Joan C. Browning during the Georgiana and Max S. Lale Lecture at 7 p.m. Oct. 10 in the Baker Pattillo Student Center Grand Ballroom.

Browning is one of 436 people who were part of the Freedom Riders, a group of civil rights activist who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of Supreme Court decisions that ruled segregated public buses were unconstitutional.

The Freedom Riders were arrested, beaten and jailed, but despite their brutal receptions, they succeeded in taking down the “white” and “colored” signs in bus and train terminals and on buses and trains.

Alongside 177 other Freedom Riders, Browning appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and was one of 14 women Freedom Riders honored by the National Women’s Law Center at an event where former President Barack Obama met with the women.

Browning, who is white, grew up on a family farm in Telfair County, Georgia, working in tobacco, watermelon, cantaloupe and vegetable fields and picking cotton. She attended Georgia State College for Women in Milledgeville until 1961 when she had to leave for worshipping with blacks at Wesley Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in 1994 at West Virginia State College and completed courses toward a master’s degree in humanities/history at Marshall University.

In addition to being a Freedom Rider, Browning was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee volunteer, worked in anti-poverty and social justice programs in the 1960s and 1970s, was an organizer of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, and served as treasurer of Georgians for Robert Kennedy.

Additionally, she served as special assistant to Andrea J. Pendleton, the first woman elected mayor of Rainelle, West Virginia, served 10 years on the Supreme Court of West Virginia’s Fatality Review Committee and chaired the West Virginia University Center for Women’s Studies Visiting Committee. She also served a term on the West Virginia Human Rights Commission.

Browning has received numerous awards and recognition for her work as an activist. Her experience as a 1960s Freedom Rider and social justice activist are described in “Shiloh Witness,” an autobiographic chapter in the volume “Deep In Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement,” and her article “Invisible Revolutionaries: White Women in Civil Rights Movement Historiography” in the fall 1996 Journal of Women’s History. She now writes and lectures about the struggle for freedom.

This event is free and open to the public. The ETHA presents this annual lecture

through a generous grant from the late Max Sims Lale, a noted East Texas journalist, author and historian.

For more information, contact Dr. Scott Sosebee, SFA associate professor of history, at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or (936) 468-2407.

By Emily Brown, marketing communications specialist at Stephen F. Austin State University.