Author Kerry Kennedy will never forget her first human rights abuse case.

During a 1981 summer internship with Amnesty International in Washington, D.C., Kennedy assisted Salvadoran refugees, including the widow of a missing labor organizer. 

After the widow refused to stop demanding his release, death squads followed her home and raped and murdered her 14-year-old daughter. She escaped with her 7-year-old son, but U.S. immigration officials captured them near the Texas border and jailed the two in a mosquito-infested detention center.

The illiterate, Spanish-speaking mother and child were coerced into signing voluntary departure forms in English, and shipped back to the war and death squads.

“I was horrified that my country, the richest and most powerful of all nation on earth, treated the most destitute with such disdain. And I wanted to do something about it,” Kennedy says.

Kennedy has been devoted to the vindication of equal justice, and the promotion and protection of basic rights. She will speak at the inaugural Delta Gamma Lectureship in Values and Ethics. The lecture is 4 p.m. Thursday in the Michigan League Ballroom.

The Lectureship at Michigan, hosted by the Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, is free and open to the public.

Kennedy will discuss her book “Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World,” which features interviews with human rights activists ranging from the famous Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu to lesser-known individuals with courage.

“We must bring the international spotlight to violations and broaden the community of those who know and care about the individuals portrayed,” she says. “This alone may well stop a disappearance, cancel a torture session or even, some day, save a life.”

These individuals challenged society to move beyond physical comforts to higher aspirations.

“Their determination, valor and commitment in the face of overwhelming danger, challenge each of us to take up the torch for a more decent society and speak truth to power,” Kennedy notes. “This is not about being a victim. The real story is not the repression but the resistance, not the terror but the courage, not the futility but the power of one to create change.”

In fact, Kennedy points to several historical examples regarding how every day people have the power to create change regarding human rights.

When Kennedy started working in human rights 30 years ago, military dictatorships ruled throughout South America, she says. Today, the only one left standing is Castro in Cuba. Communism once dominated Eastern Europe, but it now free of Communist control. And recently, after three brutal decades, the people of Egypt rose up and peacefully removed their oppressor.

“All of these changes came about not because governments, militaries or multi-national corporations wanted them to, but because people with few resources beyond their own determination fought for human rights,” she says. 

Through groups like Amnesty, thousands of people worldwide like Kennedy are trying to change the course of their societies. 

“I found myself surrounded by Davids, who, with little more than the slingshots of their hearts and nerve and sinew to support them, stood up against a world full of Goliaths,” she said. “They changed my life, and I have been working on these issues ever since.”