Associated
Black Charities will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's
1954 decree in Brown v Board of Education ("Brown") declaring "separate
but equal" public education systems in the United States unconstitutional.
On Thursday, February 5, 2004 at its 18th Annual Black History Makers Awards dinner
in the New York at the Marriott Marquis hotel, Associated Black Charities will
honor federal Judge Robert L. Carter of the Southern District Court of New York
and William T. Coleman, Jr., senior partner and counselor in the international
law firm of O'Melveny & Myers LLP of Washington, D.C. In their respective
capacities of lead plaintiff attorney and legal strategist, Judge Carter and Mr.
Coleman assisted lead counsel Thurgood Marshall in preparing for and presenting
Brown to the Supreme Court.
The Brown decision, which reversed the Supreme Court's 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson
ruling and declared the "separate but equal" doctrine it spawned to
be in violation of the 14th Amendment. It marked a watershed in education and
generally in race relations in the United States. In the view probably of most
African Americans at the time, the decision meant, finally, the removal of restrictions
on their ability and opportunity for full self-realization. It was felt that free
and unfettered participation in American life was at hand with complete assimilation
into American society as citizens with equal rights, obligations, privileges and
benefits.
The occasion of Brown's 50th anniversary marks a unique opportunity for Associated
Black Charities to relate the vision emanating from Brown of expanded educational
opportunity to African Americans not only to its past recognition of key contributors
to Brown's pronouncement, but also to its special emphasis on education in its
program offering.
In 1992, 1993, and 1995, respectively, the honorees at Associated Black Charities'
Black History Makers Awards were: Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, who provided the psychological
analysis underlying the Brown decision, Justice Thurgood Marshall, and the NAACP
Legal Defense and Educational Fund itself. At the 2003 Black History Makers Awards,
Associated Black Charities focused on education as the basis for its theme "New
Visions for Youth" and pointed to emerging career and business opportunities
as chief executive officers and entrepreneurs of companies financed in American
capital markets.
The celebration of Brown's 50th anniversary draws sharp relief between the opportunities
it wrought and the challenges yet to be addressed, especially in transforming
American public education performance to meet the basic skills demand of 21st
century employers and in stimulating increased African American participation
in higher education programs. The substantive national progress that has been
made since 1954 is blurred by old attitudinal habits that get translated to continued
resistance to the actual practice of the ideals so elegantly put forth in the
American constitution.
In light of the foregoing, the 2004 Black History Makers Awards theme: "Brown's
Prophecy: Education and Diversity" is especially apt. For its captures the
perception of broadened inclusion of African Americans in American society stimulated
by Brown while, when measured against today's reality, articulates the remaining
distance to be traversed to gather in the promises offered by the 1954 decision.
