Much progress has been made in promoting integration and equality in public education, but America still has a lot of work to do, a civil rights activist said Tuesday at Emens.
"Even in 2004, we are not pulling ourselves together," Cheryl Brown Henderson said. "School desegregation needs to remain on the national agenda."
Henderson and sister Linda Brown Thompson were key figures in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education court case, which laid the foundation for the Civil Rights movement.
The daughters of the late Rev. Oliver Brown were invited to speak at Ball State to keynote this week's Martin Luther King Jr. observance, a collaboration between the Ball State and Muncie communities.
In "An Evening with the Brown Sisters," Henderson and Thompson emphasized how the Brown v. Board of Education case helped overturn the "separate but equal" doctrine established in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. In doing so, the Brown case helped blacks to win full legal equality under the U.S. Constitution.
May will mark the 50th anniversary of the Brown verdict.
Douglas McConkey, vice president of student affairs and enrollment management, said having the Brown sisters visit Ball State was fitting to honor both their legacy and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"The Browns are at the center of a very significant event in the fight for civil rights and equal opportunity," McConkey said. "(Brown v. Board of Education) has set in place an unprecedented transformation in our system of public education."
In their speech Tuesday, the Browns highlighted the role their family played in the court case that led to the integration of public elementary schools in the South.
Thompson said as she was growing up in Topeka, Kan. in the fall of 1950, she would travel across town to an all-black school rather than attending the all-white elementary school only four blocks away. She said her mother was sad to have to send her daughter on the long walk she herself had taken to school every morning as a child.
"It was such a bitter walk for a child of my age to endure, especially in the cold weather," Thompson said. "Black parents began to feel that the time to enroll their students in all-white schools was long overdo."
Thompson said her father decided to meet with 12 other black parents and local attorney Charles Scott to combat segregation in public education. After teaming up with the NAACP, the group filed a suit in federal court in February 1951, Thompson said.
But the court deemed segregation in the pubic schools constitutional, she said.
Oliver Brown and the NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court again in October 1951, consolidating their case with similar cases in South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware to emphasize the psychological damage blacks experienced because of continued segregation in public schools, Thompson said.
After the case remained in the Supreme Court for several years, May 17, 1954 marked one of the most significant days in black history as the federal court ruled finally in favor of the plaintiffs and required schools across the United States to be desegregated.
"The court's decision was overwhelming," Thompson said. "I remember seeing the tears in my father's eyes as he embraced us, repeating 'Thanks be unto God.' "
Thompson said she is proud of her father's role in the Brown v. Board of Education Decision. Though Oliver Brown died in 1961 at age 42, he will remain a legacy, she said.
"As he stepped off of the witness stand (in 1951), he stepped into the pages of history," Thompson said. "I'm sure he would have been a strong civil rights activist in the movements of the 1960s."
Henderson said the Brown court case was significant in that it helped to correct a history of human rights abuses, overturning laws in 21 states that promoted legal segregation in their public schools.
The case finally placed race on the national agenda, she said.
"This country needed Brown because we needed to show that we understood the struggle between freedom and tyranny, " Henderson said. "And we needed to show that we could live up to our own Constitution."
Henderson said while the Brown decision helped blacks to achieve one of their primary goals for public education, not all blacks were pleased with the verdict.
Without any more segregated schools, many black teachers lost their jobs. In addition, black students often progressed from kindergarten through high school without ever having a black teacher as a role model in the classroom, she said.
While such issues arose as a result of the Brown verdict, the court case was still worthwhile, Henderson said.
Brown v. Board of Education, in fact, served as the foundation for other important pieces of legislation that followed shortly thereafter, she said. Such legislations included Title IX, the Voting Rights Act, and the integration of public transportation systems.
"(While we lost) some things in the process (of the Brown case), we gained a lot more," she said.
Henderson said as the United States approaches the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, students need to be better educated about the significance of the case.
The case can allow students to focus more on race relations in today's society, she said.
"It's time for this country to understand Brown v. Board of Education and to understand that diversity is something we were built on, and it's something we should embrace," Henderson said.
Derick Virgil, director of Ball State's Multicultural Center, said he was glad the Ball State and Muncie communities had the opportunity to meet the Brown sisters.
Many people often overlook the Brown decision's role in enhancing public education for students of all races, he said.
"It's important that we remember our past so we don't repeat the singular injustices of our past," Virgil said.
Sophomore Josh Curtis said he was glad he attended the Brown sisters' speech Tuesday.
A history major, Curtis said he was pleased to meet two key figures in the Civil Rights movement and enjoyed listening to their story.
"It's cool to see where they come from," Curtis said. "We (as a society) have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go."
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