Founders Day 2017 Blooms Bright
MEC celebrated Founders Day on Thursday, filling the amphitheater with food, music, the Cougar mascot, as well as tables for voter registration and student life.
The festivities on September 28, 2017 marked a signature day 47 years ago in higher education and in Central Brooklyn. MEC was officially established on July 30, 1970 when Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller signed the legislation approving the College. But it was on September 28, 1970 that the Board of Higher Education of the City of New York approved the recommendation to name our institution Medgar Evers College. For that reason, September 28 is observed as Founders Day.
The College’s Community Council chose the name to honor the civil rights leader Medgar Wiley Evers, an important advocate for black voting rights as a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Jackson, Mississippi.
On June 12, 1963 – the day after President John F. Kennedy announced his intention to send anti-discrimination legislation to Congress – Evers was fatally shot in the back. The 37-year-old husband and father of three was assassinated in the driveway of his Mississippi home.  His legacy and the national outrage over his murder helped usher the Civil Rights Act into law in 1964. Like Evers, President Kennedy did not live to see the legislation become law, having been assassinated in Dallas in 1963.
