[Wesleyan University]
   

Wesleyan University To Honor 50 Year Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

Dr. Charles V. Willie of Harvard University to Deliver Keynote Address

For immediate release: Wednesday, September 22, 2004

(MIDDLETOWN, CT) – In honor of the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision where public schools nationwide were ordered to desegregate, Wesleyan University will present its Raymond E. Baldwin Lecture titled "Brown v. Board of Education: A Restoration of Equity," on Tuesday, October 5th at 8 p.m. in the Memorial Chapel.

The lecture, which is open to the public, will be delivered by Charles V. Willie, the Charles William Eliot Professor of Education Emeritus and Professor of Education Emeritus at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.

A human rights activist, Willie attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia and was a classmate of Martin Luther King, Jr. By appointment of President Jimmy Carter, he was a member of the President's Commission on Mental Health and is a former vice president of the American Sociological Association, and former president of the Eastern Sociological Society. Willie, a court-appointed master and an expert witness or consultant in several school desegregation cases, was also a founding member of the Human Rights Council in Concord, Mass. and former Chair of the Board of Directors of the Greeley Foundation for Peace and Justice.

Panel discussions about the decision will take place at Wesleyan's Center for African American Studies on Wednesday, October 6th. From 10-11a.m. panelists include keynote speaker Charles V. Willie; Carol Wright, Wesleyan University Visiting Instructor, African American Studies; Elizabeth Horton Sheff, Hartford City Councilperson, Plaintiff in Lawsuit of Sheff v. O’Neill (1989); Roxanne Aaron-Selph, President, Middlesex County NAACP. From noon-1p.m. panelists include, John Finn, Wesleyan University Professor of Government; Judith Winston, Principal and Co-founder, Winston, Withers & Associates, LLC and former General Counsel, U.S. Department of Education; Melissa Woods ’94, Assistant Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Dawne Westbrook, Middletown Civil Rights Attorney.

The Baldwin Fellowship is named in honor of the late Raymond E. Baldwin '16, the only person to hold Connecticut’s three highest public offices: governor, U.S. senator and chief justice of the state's Supreme Court. The Baldwin Fellows Program, endowed by the Middlesex Mutual Assurance Company, brings nationally and internationally renowned figures to the Wesleyan campus for lectures and classroom interaction with students and faculty.

For more information, please contact Jean Shaw at 860-685-2253 or jshaw@wesleyan.edu