By Cody Heintz, Business Manager
On Thursday, October 27th, the University will host From Brown To Brown And Beyond to examine the significance of the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education.
The symposium will be presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center, The Harry H. Wachtel Distinguished Teaching Professorship, The New Opportunities at Hofstra (NOAH) Program and Claflin University (South Carolina). The Symposium is directed by Hofstra Full Professor of History Michael D’Innocenzo and Associate Professor Millicent E. Brown, who teaches History and Sociology at Claflin University and was formerly an exchange professor at Hofstra.
Athelene Collins, Senior Associate Director of the Hofstra Cultural Center, will serve as symposium coordinator. The symposium includes panelists from not only Claflin & Hofstra but also from the ACLU, North Carolina Central University, Emory University, Erase Racism, Brown University, New York Civil Liberties Union and College of Charleston.
The symposium, which has been in planning for six months, will include 2 panel discussions, 4 documentaries and a town hall discussion. The first panel discussion will examine the Brown case and advances that have taken place since the Supreme Court Case.
At the symposium, Athelene said she would like to see “Community members, especially parents and care givers, given a chance to voice their concerns and demands for a more equitable public school system that will not continue to use schools as pipelines to prisons or to limit access to success in school. At the same time, they will be hearing of models [local and national] to close educational achievement gaps.”
Millicent E. Brown was one of the “first children” to desegregate schools in South Carolina.
