NATCHEZ — “An Evening to Remember” is the title of a program that will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday at Trinity Episcopal Church in Natchez, kicking off the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration.

“It is bound to be just that,” said Walton Jones, rector of Trinity. “We are delighted to host Mississippi’s retired Bishop Duncan M. Gray Jr. and his biographer, Araminta Stone Johnston. They will present an interactive program, a conversation, which focuses on Bishop Gray’s keen interest in race relations.”

The evening will kick off the 25th annual award-winning NLCC, which runs Thursday through Sunday and is themed, “60 Years and Counting: Voices of the Civil Rights Movement.”

Also participating in the free program at Trinity are Bishop Duncan M. Gray III, who will be the moderator, and Jacqueline Dace of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, who will present a program about the new Civil Rights Museum in Jackson.

“Bishop Gray was at Ole Miss in 1962, when James Meredith integrated the university,” Jones said. “He tried to quell the riot.”

At the time, Gray was a priest at St. Peter’s Church in Oxford, where Johnston was a parishioner. Johnston, now a professor at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, is the author of “And One Was a Priest: The Life and Times of Duncan M. Gray Jr.”

“Dr. Johnston shows a genuine caring and fondness for Bishop Gray in her book,” said John Evans, owner of Lemuria Books in Jackson. “She worked hard on the biography. It shows sincere academic effort.”

A reception will follow at the church honoring both bishops, Johnston and Dace. Copies of Johnston’s biography will be sold and signed at that time.

A who’s who of other well-known Southerners, will discuss Civil Rights voices during free programs at the Natchez Convention Center Friday and Saturday. They include James Meredith, William F. Winter, David G. Sansing, Thad Cochran, Kathryn Stockett, Tate Taylor, Clifton Taulbert, Greg Iles, William R. Ferris, Charles Reagan Wilson, David L. Jordan, Ed King, Jerry Mitchell, Stanley Nelson, Charles Bolton, Barbara Carpenter, John D.W. Guice, Gerald McRaney, Robert L. Jenkins and Robert Khayat.

For a full agenda and other information about the Celebration, visit colin.edu/nlcc, email NLCC@colin.edu or call 866-296-NLCC.

The conference is sponsored by Copiah-Lincoln Community College and Miss. Department of Archives and History with support of Natchez National Historical Park, Miss. Humanities Council, City of Natchez and Adams County Board of Supervisors.