Feature

Faculty, students discuss civil rights, social change

By Tom Cronin - Public Affairs Reporter

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which held that the “separate but equal” doctrine had no place in public education, has become increasingly recognized over the last 50 years as a major turning point in the American civil rights movement. The battle for racial equality, however, began long before the Brown decision and was led by many individuals whose names are not commonly found in history books.
The 1990 documentary “The Road to Brown” depicted a post-World War I movement led by Charles Hamilton Houston, which aimed to overturn the segregationist Jim Crow laws through a series of court cases that ultimately set the stage for the Brown decision.
A small group of students and faculty members viewed and discussed the film Thursday at an event sponsored by the UIS History Club as part of the Illinois Humanities Council’s yearlong focus on the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision. The Central Illinois Regional Planning Committee of the Illinois Humanities Council was the event’s local co-sponsor.
Lionel Kimble, assistant professor of African-American studies, said that the film was important for three main reasons. First, it showed that the history of the civil rights movement extends beyond the realm of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech and Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on an Alabama bus in 1955.
“I think the important thing that we take from the study of African-American history, especially dealing with the civil rights movement, is we look at the lives of all those people, those not-so-well-known people, like Charles Hamilton Houston … folks you never heard of before, folks they don’t make HBO movies about, folks you don’t see on Biography Channel,” Kimble said. “… By studying these people, we come to a better understanding that without these nameless people, folks like Parks, folks like King, couldn’t have done what they did.”
Second, the film showed that Houston did not limit his campaign strictly to education, Kimble said. Houston, a black middle-class lawyer, originally battled segregation in the educational setting because he believed that the battle could be won there, according to the film. Later, however, he began to challenge segregation in other arenas, such as labor and housing.
“One of the things Houston and his colleagues realized was the interconnectivity of all these things, that if we’re going to fundamentally change American society, we must attack discrimination and racism in all of these different arenas,” Kimble said.
Third, the film provided a glimpse into the violent and contentious aftermath of the Brown decision, Kimble said. According to the film, the legacy of Jim Crow remained strong in the South in the years following the Brown decision, despite the fact that the Jim Crow laws had been struck down. Some state governments declared the Brown decision unconstitutional, and the Ku Klux Klan terrorized anybody who implemented the Brown decision, according to the film.
Unlike members of the Klan and some other opponents of the Brown decision, Houston did not fight the battle for racial equality using violent means. Kimble said that Houston knew that his battle could not be won in the streets, so he decided to take his battle to the courts.
“The irony of this whole thing is that they took the fight to the court, and as we saw in the film the court was one of the last places African Americans were getting any fair share,” Kimble said. “So they took what they were given, took the environment that they were presented with, and they used the tools that racists had used against them to fight the very system that was oppressing them. It was brilliant.”
Even with equal-rights laws in place, it is important for civil rights activists today to work for change in a public and social arena because laws do not necessarily determine people’s mindsets, according to Kemau Kemayo, assistant professor of African-American studies.
“If the law determined people’s mindsets, they’d stop at stop signs,” he said.
Kemayo said that it is also important to understand that it can take as long as 20 years to implement social change. In today’s “microwave society,” most activists cannot accept the fact that the implementation of social change is a long-term process, he said.
According to Kimble, most black Americans do not push for social change as often as they should because they don’t seem to understand that social change needs to begin with themselves. Like those who were involved with the civil rights movement during and before the 1960s, black Americans today need to take a stand against injustices that they face and organize at a local level to push for change, he said.
“Do we need a law to tell us what we should do?” Kimble asked. “It’s an individual’s responsibility, an American citizen’s responsibility, to disobey an unjust law, right? The power of the state comes from the individual, and if we see something going wrong with society, it is our responsibility to do something about it.”

UIS Enlightens and Promotes Literacy in Neighboring Elementary Schools for Black History Month

By Janee Mitchell - Feature Writer

In an endeavor to enlighten students about black authors for Black History Month, UIS participated in the 16th National African-American Read-In. Six local elementary schools were involved, including Jane Addams Elementary, Elizabeth Graham Elementary, Ridgely Elementary, Feitshans-Edison Magnet School, Farmingdale Elementary and Enos Elementary.

Capital Scholar student Jen Wilson and Peggy Dunn, director or public policy and high school initiatives, read to elementary students as part of the 16th National African-American Read-in

Director of Public Policy and High School Initiatives Peggy Dunn; Kemau Kemayo, associate professor of African-American studies; Jennifer Herring, assistant professor in teacher education and Shawn Shures, visiting marketing and development specialist read selections from Virginia Hamilton’s “People Could Fly” and “Many Thousand Gone” to over 2600 students.
The two works are folktales with a compilation of up to 30 stories or more. The UIS readers each chose a story from the folktales to read to the students of the school they were assigned.
Kemayo read to the students of Feitshans-Edison Magnet School and was afforded the opportunity to return and do more work with the school. Herring read to the students of Elizabeth Graham Elementary, Shures read to the students of Enos Elementary and Dunn, coordinator for UIS’ involvement in the read-in, read to the students of Jane Addams Elementary, Ridgely Elementary and Farmingdale Elementary, accompanied by her grad assistant Elaina Sablotney and Capital Scholar Jenn Wilson.
Dunn said the 16-year program, started by Dr. Sandra Gibbs of the Black Caucus, gained her interest and she initiated UIS involvement in the program approximately five years ago. Last year, UIS was recognized in the NCTE magazine for reading to the most students in the U.S.
However, Dunn is not so sure UIS will gain the title this year, as many more people are becoming involved. Dunn said, “the goal around the world is that on one day in February people will read the works of African-American authors to children to involve them with the new African-American authors that are out there.”
Every Dunn chooses the author, creates an author bio for the UIS readers, and purchases the books to be used for the read-in from her own finances. Dunn also puts together a packet including a play written by Dunn herself, a list of black authors, websites and lesson plans which Dunn said “will promote diversity in the classroom all year.” The packets were given to instructors at each school as an extra bonus for their students’ participation in the read-in.
Each year new black authors are chosen for the read-in and new packets created. This year Dunn wrote the play, “The Legend of the Pin Oak”, a tale of slavery in Tennessee, focusing on a white slave owner and the struggle between his two children, his white son and his son mothered by his black slave. The play is designed to actively involve and familiarize students with black history.
Another literacy promoter, birthed from the read-in, is a program Dunn utilizes to teach students PowerPoint methods of writing a book. Students are encouraged to write a book a month, which will be given to the lower classes to encourage them to read. Dunn said the program is used for schools low in funding to build a classroom library.
The read-in seems to be promoting literacy in various areas and UIS’ involvement has grown from a one-person team reading to 300 students, to a multi-reader team reading to over 2600 students.
Dunn said she wishes more students could participate in the read-in and even sought the partnership of Sankofa, but it was too premature for the student group to become involved. Dunn encourages their assistance in the future and other students who would like to participate in the readings.
Dunn said she may be leaving this year and hopes someone will take on her legacy and keep UIS involvement in the read-in going. This opens the door for other members of the UIS community to become involved and continue to promote literacy.

Faculty, students discuss civil rights, social change

UIS Enlightens and Promotes Literacy in Neighboring Elementary Schools for Black History Month