This year, the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign is marking 70 years since the landmark Supreme Court decision that ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was part of the American Civil Rights movement and was also fueled by music.
On Wednesday, December 4 from 6:00-8:00 p.m., residents are invited to hear music and a discussion of the musicology of the era at the Gallery Art Bar in Urbana. It’s part of a yearlong schedule of discussions by the U of I to commemorate Brown v. Board of Education and look at the future of school desegregation in America.
IPM News Director Reginald Hardwick spoke with Rod Wyatt, Assistant Chancellor of Pre-K through 12 initiatives at the university ahead of the event. A transcription is below:
HARDWICK: We’re 70 years past, and do you have a concern that young people here are so far removed from it, and it’s not being taught… that a program like this is needed?
WYATT: Absolutely. There are a number of children that don’t have a good context for what that Brown v Board decision was, and therefore they’re missing the key work that was done, the heavy lifting by their predecessors that really pushed us forward educationally, but at the same time realizing we have not reached and fully vetted what that could mean educationally for all of our children.
HARDWICK: Why is the university taking a full year to look at the Brown v Board decision?
WYATT: Well, we’re 70 years past that landmark decision, and there’s still major elements that have not been addressed, equity being one of them. Throughout education, particularly for Black and Brown children. And so we wanted to do a call to action around research and scholarship, teacher education, professional development, community engagement, partnerships, student support and access, [and] curriculum transformation, because the environment that we now teach in has changed tremendously with the age of digital access that people now have.
HARDWICK: Why is it important to discuss the musicology of the era?
WYATT: Well, that goes directly back to the heart of me, that music was what motivated and captivated me as a child growing up, because I grew up through the Civil Rights Movement and listening to the different artists ask questions and questioned society as to what was going on and why we couldn’t achieve the education that we really needed to receive.
MUSIC: Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Wake Up Everybody
WYATT: When [Teddy Pendergrass and Harold Melvin And The Blue Notes] they were singing, they were talking about, you know, ‘wake up everybody. No more sleeping in bed. No more backward thinking. Time for thinking ahead.’ Listen to the words, the words. The music was great, but the words carried significant meaning, and I think to bring some of that to light and help our children understand and even the communities to re-engage with that time period and understand what the artists were saying, is critically important as we continue to try and move Brown v Board forward.
MUSIC: Sam Cooke, A Change Is Gonna Come
WYATT: You begin to understand what these musicians were saying to the public, it’s time for a change, and we have to be the change that we’re looking for.
HARDWICK: What will happen at the Gallery Art Bar on December 4?
WYATT: If I’m not mistaken, we’re going to have spoken word. We’re going to have artists performing different songs of the era, and then have conversations about what those songs meant, what the artists were trying to say, and how that now comes into play today, because if we were to look, research is telling us right now that we’re going back to a more segregated school system than we’ve ever had. And so how do we change that? How do we change that narrative? How do we change that movement? Because it is critically important for the well being of not just the Black and Brown community, but for the United States of America to continue to move forward having a diverse population of people with different lived experiences, pouring into the country, pouring into the knowledge it’s critically important to keep us elevated as one of the leaders around the world. Just years
HARDWICK: After the Brown v Board of Education decision Thurgood Marshall, the man who argued before the Supreme Court, talked at the University of Illinois, as recorded by WILL radio.
MARSHALL: Anybody has a right to say, I do not want to go to school with a Negro. Anybody has a right to say, I will not go to college with a Negro. But nobody has a right to say that that Negro can’t go to my college. You don’t want to go to college with Negroes. Get out. You go from college to college, you end up there are no colleges where there aren’t Negroes. You still have your constitutional right to stay away from college and die a dummy. You still keep your right, and I’ll protect your right.
HARDWICK: I asked Rod Wyatt what he would say to Marshall if he were alive today,
WYATT: The first thing I would say is thank you. Because Brown v. Board didn’t just happen. There were a series of litigations and cases that he fought in court that led us to Brown v. Board, just the intellectual depth of his understanding of where this country was and where it needed to go was tremendous, and to be able to stand before the Supreme Court and then ultimately become a Supreme Court justice. Wow. I might be speechless standing before him simply because of his dedication to helping to move us forward.
HARDWICK: In other events that you’ve had, have you seen the light bulb go off and young people react to what they’ve learned [about Brown v. Board]?
WYATT: In September at Constitution Day at the College of Law, the room was packed with students, so much so we had to have an overflow space. That overflow space packed out. So the students were asking very poignant and significant questions of, how do we engage this to continue to move forward, even from a legal standpoint, how do we engage this work to ensure that it doesn’t die, that it doesn’t fizzle out, and that we truly achieve what The our forefathers thinkings were around Brown v Board. Does that give you hope? Gives me hope. It gives me great pride to know that I’m involved with something that may have a significant impact somewhere down the road. I may not live to see it, but that’s okay.
HARDWICK: What is planned in January and the months after?
WYATT: We’re going to have an event on January the 29th with a professor coming in from Kansas that’s going to do a walking presentation. So you get to walk through the entire presentation. Highlight. Including the 12 women that were involved in the Brown v Board decision. And those are women that people never talk about. They always talk about the decision, but they don’t talk about the litigants that were involved in that decision. We have a collaboration in February with Parkland College, which is going to be open to the public to have a dialog and sit down and really talk deeply about the impact, or the lack thereof of the Brown v Board decision, and how that has either changed lives or now we’re continuing to fight to move forward with the equity side of the Brown v Board.