Michael Gordon Bennett
Author, Keynote Speaker & Founder of 727 Squared Entertainment
California, United States •
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About
I spent three decades in radio, television, and independent production, so I build a talk the way I’d build a broadcast: tight, on time, and shaped for the room in front of me. My talks start with a true story — a twelve-year-old Black military kid bused into a historically Black school in Panama City, Florida, in 1970 — and the history behind it is sourced. But they aren’t lectures. I speak conversationally, and I want your audience to feel I’m on their side, not talking at them. Every talk leaves people with something they can carry out of the room and use. And with four keynotes in lengths from a 12-minute cut to a full hour with Q&A, I fit your program instead of asking you to fit mine.
Speaking Topics
Signature Programs (4)
The psychology of belonging, identity, and the childhood coping strategies that quietly run adult lives.
Key Takeaways
- A shared vocabulary for a nearly universal experience — the calibration we all perform in unfamiliar rooms. A way to recognize the moment adaptation becomes identity, and a strategy outlives its purpose. One practical question to carry into any room: is this survival, or is this just memory?
Audience
Psychology & sociology departments · mental health conferences · leadership programs · DEI practitioners · library programs on identity and belonging
Format
Delivery
The forgotten direction of court-mandated desegregation — and the story behind Out of Frame.
Key Takeaways
- A corrected picture of court-ordered busing, including the direction most Americans never heard about. The role of military communities as early laboratories of integration — years before Brown. A first-person account of desegregation from inside a historically Black school, and an invitation to record the stories in their own families.
Audience
Black History Month programming · African American history conferences · civil rights museums · university history departments · library author talks · book clubs reading the memoir
Format
Delivery
The story of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion — the only African American combat unit to land at Normandy on D-Day.
Key Takeaways
- The story of the 320th on D-Day and in the 140 days that followed — what barrage balloons were, and why they mattered. A clear-eyed understanding of how segregation shaped not only who served, but who got remembered. A framework for historical correction — and a way to act on it, from the archive to the ongoing campaign for recognition.
Audience
Veteran organizations · military history programs · WWII commemoration events · service academy audiences · Black History Month programming · museums and libraries · screenwriting and film education programs
Format
Delivery
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