Ramez Elias

A view of the Africana Studies and Research Center's new Multipurpose Room and John Henrik Clarke Africana Library.

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Rigorous scholarly reflection on vital matters of social consequence has been a hallmark of Cornell University's Africana Studies and Research Center's educational mission from the outset 35 years ago. So it is only fitting that a daylong ceremony on April 29 honoring the center's splendid new building should showcase three distinguished black legal scholars in a conference marking the 50th anniversary of the landmark civil rights case, Brown v. Board of Education . The conference precedes a formal dedication of the newly renovated and expanded center in the afternoon.

Guest speakers for the conference include Cornell alumna and legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor of law, Columbia University and the University of California-Los Angeles; Derrick A. Bell Jr., visiting professor of law, New York University School of Law; and Charles J. Ogletree, the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Opening remarks will be provided by Salah M. Hassan, the Africana Center's acting director, and Provost Biddy Martin. Robert Harris Jr., professor of Africana studies and vice provost for diversity and faculty development, will provide a historic overview of the Brown civil rights case. Bell's talk, "Fantasizing Reality: Why Brown Failed, Why Bush Won and the Necessity of Distinguishing Dangers and Opportunities," will be given at 9:30 a.m.; at 11 a.m., Ogletree will speak on "All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education." Crenshaw, Class of 1981, will deliver the keynote address, "Africana Studies Meets the Law: A Genealogy of Critical Race Theory" at 1:30 p.m. All talks will be followed by discussions led by members of the Africana faculty. All events will take place in the Multipurpose Room in the Africana Center at 310 Triphammer Road and are free and open to the public. For full details, visit the Africana center Web site http://www.asrc.cornell.edu/.

Crenshaw has written extensively about civil rights, black feminist legal theory, race, racism and the law. Her work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the National Black Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review and the Southern California Law Review. She is a founding coordinator of the Critical Race Theory workshop and co-editor of "Critical Race Theory: Key Documents That Shaped the Movement." She has lectured on race matters, addressing audiences throughout Europe, Africa and South America, and has facilitated workshops for civil rights activists in Brazil and constitutional court judges in South Africa. Her work on race and gender was influential in the drafting of the equality clause in the South African Constitution. In 2001 she authored a background paper on race and gender discrimination for the U.N. World Conference on Racism. In the domestic arena, she has served as a member of the National Science Foundation's committee to research violence against women. In 1996 she co-founded the African-American Policy Forum to highlight the centrality of gender in racial justice discourse. Crenshaw also is a founding member of the Women's Media Initiative and is a regular commentator on National Public Radio.

Bell is a compelling voice on issues of race and class. Throughout his 40-year career as a lawyer, activist, teacher and writer, he has provoked critics and challenged readers with his uncompromising candor and progressive views. Bell was the first tenured black professor at Harvard Law School in 1971, a position he relinquished in 1992 to protest the lack of women of color on the faculty. Prior to the positions at Harvard and the University of Oregon, Bell served as executive director of the Western Center on Law and Poverty at the University of Southern California Law School, counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and deputy director of the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Ogletree is a prominent legal theorist whose international reputation is based on his unstinting exploration of complex issues of law and his efforts to secure constitutional rights guaranteed to everyone equally under the law. Ogletree has examined these issues not only in the classroom, on the Internet and in the pages of prestigious law journals, but also in the everyday world of the public defender in the courtroom and in public television forums. Ogletree also serves as co-chair of the Reparations Coordinating Committee, a group of lawyers and other experts researching a lawsuit based on a claim of reparations for descendants of African slaves. His co-chair is Randall Robinson, author of "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks."

The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education is one of the most significant legal decisions in the history of civil rights in the United States and American history in general. The case essentially removed any legal basis for racial segregation in schools and other public facilities. By declaring that the discriminatory nature of racial segregation ... "violates the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees all citizens equal protection of the laws," the Brown decision became the legal template for future national and international policies on human rights. The Brown decision also initiated educational and social reform throughout the United States and catalyzed the civil rights movement.

If Brown brought the country closer to its democratic ideal, the hard work had just begun in the streets and on the campuses of America. The Africana Center and its Africana studies program were the direct result of demands from African-American students at Cornell for representative studies and facilities and can be viewed as the logical outcome of the Brown decision. Thirty-five years later the Africana Center is home to the new John Henrik Clarke Africana Library and a new multipurpose room, which is designed to provide a place for events sponsored by the Cornell and larger Ithaca communities. Friday's events, then, are inextricably linked and historically significant in their own right.