Forum Network

Georgia Perimeter College Professor Shawn L. Williams leads a slavery symposium discussion on The Willie Lynch Syndrome: Consequences of Mythologizing History. The Willie Lynch Syndrome has been devised to explain the psychological problems and disunity among black people. Williams debunks the myth of Lynch's existence and urges careful analysis of history for understanding the impact of slavery and white supremacy on African Americans.

Bob Zellner's memoir, *The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement*, reveals one man's commitment to social justice during the civil rights movement. Zellner focuses on his experience as a civil rights activist from 1960 to 1967. Bob Zellner lives and teaches in New York state. Atlanta-based co-author Constance Curry is also a civil rights veteran and has written several books and produced a documentary film.

Host of the book review show* Between the Lines*, Valerie Jackson and Juan Williams discuss his involvement with *Eyes on the Prize* and his new book *Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead End Movements, and Culture of Failure that are Undermining Black America and What We Can Do About it*.

Hank Klibanoff, lecturing from his book *The Race Beat*, tells the story of how America awakened to its race problem, of how a nation that longed for unity after World War II came instead to see, hear, and learn about the shocking indignities and injustices of racial segregation in the South, and the brutality used to enforce it. Klibanoff discusses how the nation's press, after decades of ignoring the problem, came to recognize the importance of the civil rights struggle and turn it into the most significant domestic news event of the 20th century.

A distinguished panel discusses the impact of Brown vs. the Board of Education, 50 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision. Moderated by Carmen Fields, director of media relations, KeySpan Energy New England, the panel includes Margaret A. Burnham, associate professor of law at Northeastern University School of Law; Nancy Gertner, US district court judge for the District of Massachusetts; Jonathan Kozol, author and activist; Charles Ogletree Jr., Jesse Climenko professor of law at Harvard Law School; Robert V. Ward Jr., dean of the Southern New England School of Law; and Dianne Wilkerson, state senator of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It was particularly fitting that the Museum commemorate the landmark Brown decision given the historic significance of its site, the Abiel Smith School, which was a the center of the first school desegregation case filed in the United States, Roberts v. the City of Boston (1850). The Abiel Smith School, located at 46 Joy Street on Beacon Hill, Boston and opened in 1835, was the first public school in the country to be erected specifically as a segregated school for African American primary and secondary school-aged children. Prompted by a gift from white philanthropist Abiel Smith, the City of Boston opened the Smith School on Beacon Hill. However, the building lacked the adequate space and equipment for a quality education. Benjamin Franklin Roberts, a black printer, sued the city after his 5-year-old daughter, Sarah, had been denied admission to the primary school closest to her home in the West End and was told to go to the Smith School, more than a mile away. In 1850, the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided against Roberts stating that the Boston School Committee had fulfilled its obligation to provide a "separate but equal" educational program. Forty-six years later, the US Supreme Court relied principally upon this rationale in establishing the "separate but equal doctrine", announced in Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896). This doctrine was unanimously reversed 58 years later by the US Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

This special forum includes Ernest Green, the first student of color to graduate from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, and one of nine students of color, known as the Little Rock Nine, who broke the color barrier at that school in September 1957, following the Supreme Court ruling. May 17, 1954 marks the US Supreme Court ruling stating that racial segregation in the public schools is unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

Congressman John Lewis, who at 23, spoke at the 1963 March on Washington as chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, leads a discussion on the planning, implementation, and effect the first March on Washington had on the country.

Ernest C. Withers talks about his photojournalism career, which took him on travels with Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, and other figures in the civil rights movement. As a freelance journalist for African American newspapers, he captured on film the momentous events of the 1950s and 60s as they unfolded. Withers shares his experiences and images of events that altered the course of American history in a memorable Martin Luther King Jr. Day presentation.

This discussion centers around the screening of a film by Robert Drew, founder of cinema verite. The time was June 1963, when two black students tried to gain admission to the University of Alabama. The film, entitled *Crisis*, looks at the White House's handling of the event and simultaneously traces the actions of Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. The film was controversial when first released. Although now recognized as a major piece of work, at the time, *The New York Times* editorialized against it claiming, "Under the circumstances in which this film was taken, the use of cameras could only denigrate the Office of the President. To eavesdrop on executive decisions of serious government matters while they are in progress is highly inappropriate. The White House isn't Macy's window." Today, because of this film, we have a remarkable historical record of what led to the integration of the University of Alabama.

A discussion on the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision with a VIP panel that includes Harvard's Charles Ogletree, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Caroline Hoxby, and Lani Guinier, as well as Georgetown professor Sheryll Cashin and Abigail Thernstrom of the Manhattan Institute.