Attending a Speech on Brown versus Board of Education -- Linda Brown C

The Brown Sisters Revisited Five weeks ago I made my way through the atrocious March weather to Foellinger auditorium to hear the sisters whose name introduces the landmark case of 1954 which began the uphill process of integration. On that chilly March day, Linda Brown and Cheryl Brown Henderson spoke to a crowd of about five-hundred consisting of students, faculty and local citizens. The sisters addressed the assembly consecutively, Linda Brown being the first to speak. Their topics ranged from their first-hand memories of the case to their continuing efforts to fight for equal education through their efforts with the Brown Foundation. The familiarity of the Brown decision became a little easier to grasp after seeing this marquee event of the Brown v. Board of Education jubilee celebration. I first heard of the Brown decision in elementary school. For four years I attended a progressive Montessori school in my hometown of St. Paul, MN. The school had an enrollment smaller than most of my lectures here at the University. My teacher for those four years was a seventy year old woman named Joan who to this day I revere as the best educator I had besides my parents. Joan had more intelligence than most college professors and more social consciousness than a human rights activist. In February of my first grade year, roughly twelve years before the Brown sisters’ presentation at Foellinger, Joan loaded up the Civil Rights movement film strip. After lunch and recess, the lessons usually revolved around a video or a film strip. Afternoon instruction topics ranged from early Greek art to the Theory of Relativity and everything in between. Often the antiquated film strip machine would break and w... ...le girl had helped change the way America thought about race relations. I learned the emotions, the dialogue and the family ties that facilitated the early movement. These were things that even Joan, bless her heart, could not teach me. One cannot learn the inside details and feelings of those who went through such tumultuous times and rode the waves of a sea of change. Usually when I am assigned to do something outside of school I don’t get much learning out of the assignment. But this assignment proved invaluable to my understanding of the Civil Rights movement and I am in debt to the educational powers that be for requiring me to go. Would I go see this speech without the required assignment? The answer unfortunately is no. I have come to realize over my years of education that it is the events outside of school in which one learns the most.