Fort Worth Opera will launch a six-month series of panel discussions, exploring the 50 years that have passed since John F. Kennedy’s presidency and assassination.

Beginning in October, JFK: Five Decades of Progress will offer community conversations on topics like Civil Rights, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Space Race and will reveal how those issues and policies have developed since JFK’s final days in Texas to now, according to a press release.

A few of the featured panelists include, retired NASA scientist Dr. Wendell Mendell, legendary journalist Bob Ray Sanders and Congresswoman Kay Granger.

The series will commemorate FWOpera’s world premiere production of JFK in April 2016. The new opera by David T.  Little and Royce Vavrek, depicts the hours President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, spent between their arrival at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth and his assassination in Dallas the next day on Nov. 22, 1963.

Official symposia partners include The Sixth Floor Museum, KERA, Arlington Convention & Visitors Bureau, the University of Texas at Arlington, Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce and Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

For more information on these events and registration, download the press release.

Here is the full series:

10/22/2015

Space Race: Advances in U.S. Science and Transportation Technology

6:30-8 p.m.

University of Texas at Arlington

11/18/2015

Civil Rights in Modern America

6:30-8 p.m.

The Potter’s House

11/19/2015

Civil Rights in Modern America

6:30-8 p.m.

I.M. Terrell High School Auditorium (Fort Worth)

1/21/2016

Cuba and Immigration

6:30-8 p.m.

TCC Trinity River Campus, Energy Auditorium

02/18/2016

Journalism

6:30-8 p.m.

7^th Floor at The Sixth Floor Museum

03/24/2016

The Arts: An Evening Dedicated to Ruth Carter Stevenson

6:30-8 p.m.

Piano Pavilion, Kimbell Art Museum