As Cheryl Brown Henderson spoke at the University of Chicago’s annual commemoration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., she reminded us of King’s teaching that we cannot be more concerned about protest marches than the conditions that brought about the necessity to march.
“To make changes, we have to go to the streets and then into city hall, to school board meetings, and into the voting booth,” she said.
Brown Henderson knows something about social advocacy. Her late father, the Rev. Oliver L. Brown, was the lead plaintiff in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education.
“The civil rights victory that was Brown v. Board dismantled the legal framework for segregation. But the myth of Brown is that it was something just my father did,” she said Feb. 21, delivering the keynote address in UChicago’s 32nd annual event honoring Dr. King. “Like the Civil Rights movement, Brown was a movement. It was collective action, involving hundreds of people and years of planning.”
King realized that although Brown was law, the country was dragging its feet on implementing it. By working on the Montgomery bus boycott—the longest sustained protest in the nation’s history—and by convening three marches on Washington, Brown Henderson said, King urged the United States put Brown v. Board into practice.
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This story was first published by UChicago News.
