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As part of the University’s efforts to commemorate the life and dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ellis Cose addressed students, faculty, and staff on Jan. 21 in the Connelly Center’s Villanova Room. Before a packed auditorium, Dr. Cose gave a presentation titled “Fifty Years After Brown v. Board: The Legacy and the Dream.” He was introduced by Professor Maghan Keita of the Africana Studies department who, in conjunction with Dr. William Werpehowski, director of the Center for Peace and Justice, other members of the African Studies department, and the Ethics department, helped orchestrate the evening. Cose’s speech comprises part of Villanova’s annual week- long salute to King; a lobbying workshop, food preparing event, and the Freedom School sessions addressing various relevant issues round out the week.

Ellis Cose has been a prominent name in journalism for many years, and is also a respected author. At 19, he began working for the Chicago Sun- Times and became the youngest editorial columnist ever employed in the Chicago area. He has also written or edited for The New York Daily, Detroit Free Press, USA Today, and Time magazine, and currently is a columnist and contributing editor for Newsweek magazine. He has appeared on many national television programs and received multiple journalistic awards. He is also author of several widely-read books on a variety of themes relating to race relations. Most recently, he penned a best-selling essay on the state of black men in America, entitled The Envy of the World. In his introduction, Keita quoted passages from this book and credited it as the catalyst for his own interest in Cose’ work.

Cose began his speech by thanking the Villanova community for the opportunity to “celebrate the birth and life of Martin Luther King.” He then pondered how much Dr. King’s image has been reformatted posthumously: today, the nation’s leaders commend his message of hope, while in his day, political figures condemned his ideas as dangerous and hostile.

After this musing, Cose plunged into the heart of his lecture, a study on just what progress, if any, has been made since anti- segregation verdict reached in the famous Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case. He reviewed the specifics of the case, and discussed several other similar cases that took place at approximately the same time, in various towns across the country. He later reminded the crowd that Brown v. Board was a call to end mandatory segregation, not necessarily a call for integration. “It was more of a response to visceral attacks,” Cose explained. Cose acknowledged other stumbling blocks to integration today, namely that as long as public school district zoning corresponds to segregated residential patterns, de facto segregation will remain. The solution then would require, he continued, a policy of open enrollment across school districts. Cose admit that realistically, he does not foresee much change in the near future.

Cose described the current period as “an era that is more complicated for visionaries.” Injustice is not quite as blatant as it used to be, though it still certainly exists. He mentioned, for example, that the state, through comprehensive standardized testing, now mandates what children should learn but does not set forth the resources for them to do it. Cose also emphasized on the disproportionately high numbers of black males in prisons today. He revealed the staggering statistic that if you gathered all of these inmates together, they would make up the thirteenth largest city in the world. In light of this, Cose raised the possibility that King, were he alive today, “would still be marching and protesting, not celebrating.”

In summation, Cose acknowledged that young black people, particularly black men, still struggle with whether they belong at university and whether they can “aspire to achievement at all.” Cose’s goal then, if society is to legitimately aim to educate all of its citizens, is to “put forth another view, another set of possibilities,” for these struggling black youths, that will illuminate the “possibility of a freedom that hasn’t been seen before.” Cose’s concluded with encouraging the crowd to celebrate King’s passionate visions, and to answer King’s call for people to see possibilities they once could not see, and to be true to their better selves.

The audience warmly received Cose’s words, responding with much applause. In the Question & Answer session that followed, students and teachers alike brought up a variety of topics for reflection, including public school vouchers, economic affirmative action, and the current war. To each question, Cose reiterated that he did not purport to be a psychic speaking on direct behalf of Dr. King, but he did believe that King would still see a need for action in many areas. Cose responded, “King’s vision was about embracing a concept of humanity, not one prescription everyone young or old should follow. [The question is], what does it take to get to a society where everyone can thrive?”