Mount Zion Missionary Baptist
Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church will host the 34th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award Celebration on Sunday at 3 p.m. Speaker for the event will be the Judge Cheri Beasley, an associate judge on the N.C. Court of Appeals.
Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church invites the public to attend the Humanitarian Award Celebration. Music will be provided by the Rowan Connection Choir. The Humanitarian Award recipient is Anthony P. Johnson, founder and director of the Mini Funk Factory Drum Corps at Overton Elementary School.
Beasley was elected to serve as an associate judge on the Court of Appeals in November 2008. She served as a District Court Judge in Cumberland County for 10 years. She was a Family Court Judge, a certified Juvenile Court Judge and presided in criminal, civil and traffic matters. She is a lecturer and on the faculty of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy.
Giving time to the community has always been important to Beasley. She is a member of a host of community and professional organizations, to include American Bar Association, N.C. Bar Association, Appellate Judges Conference, Cumberland County Bar Association, Wake County Bar Association, Fayetteville Area Minority Lawyers Association, Junior League of Fayetteville, and the Women’s Forum of North Carolina.
Beasley is a graduate of Douglass College of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey; studied law at The University of Tennessee College of Law in Knoxville, Tenn., and completed a summer of law studies at Oxford University in England. She has held various positions as an attorney in Raleigh, including a stint at the Wake County District Attorney’s Office and the Public Defender’s Office in Fayetteville.
She is married to Curtis Owens, a scientist at Glaxo Smith Kline in Research Triangle Park, and they are the parents of twin sons, Thomas and Matthew, age 10. They are members of First Baptist Church in Fayetteville.
“Beasley knows the importance of her work as a judge and knows she has been blessed with the opportunity to make a difference,” a press release said. “She knows also that she must assure that justice is truly accessible to all people.”
Beasley is the only African-American woman to have been elected to any statewide office without being an incumbent, the press release said.