Good afternoon. Its kind of quiet in here. I walked in and i felt like i was at a funeral. Well have to do something about this. The bodys not here. It was really somber and everything. I know the weather is impacting us, but id like to welcome you. My name is johnny taylor. Im the president and ceo of the Thurgood Marshall college fund. Welcome to our headquarters. This is home for us. We share this building with gallup, our partner in the work that well be embarking upon in the next several years and id like to welcome you to our home. Id like to start up and tell you why we are here and turn it over to the panelists is to introduce a very special person in the room. A whole bunch of special people, but a very special person here is the founder of the Thurgood Marshall college fund, dr. Jois payne. Dr. Payne, please stand. [ applause ] payne. Dr. Payne, please stand. [ applause ]o payne. Dr. Payne, please stand. [ applause ]y payne. Dr. Payne, please stand. [ applause ]c payne. Dr. Payne, please stand. [ applause ]e payne. Dr. Payne, please stand. [ applause ] i dont spend a lot of time calling out people, but at the end of the day none of us would be here if it werent for her vision to create an organization that would really focus on the historically black college and university community. Our members are the public hpcus and that is the statesupported institutions, but we represent all of the hpcu community and our advocacy, forts and our scholarship and our programattic, and i cant thank you enough for having the vision and its a wonderful thing when you look to the person who founded the organization and theyre alive, well and vibrant and we left africa and china on a 15day tour and she outdid me, and i was, like, wow. I came in on the back end of the trip and i said god bless t how did she do it . I am so embarrassed, but dr. Payne, thank you. Talking about this not ng, were it not for the charles coke foundation. I know there are representatives of the Koch Foundation and Koch Industries are, in fact, here. This is a very special moment for us. This is our first run at creating what will become, i believe, an iconic and historic institution and its the center for advancing opportunity. Our founder let me see, meredith who hates to be call out, but i have to make sure, as i said yoi dont typically call out people, but meredith, please stand. We have to shout. [ applause ] meredith is an executive at Koch Industries. The first time ive ever gone to wichita, kansas, i met with meredith, and meredith has been a huge supporter on the business side for thisser vent in particular. It was her idea to be candid and by the way she wanted it on may 17th the anniversary. She calleded and said may 17th, we need to have an event and i said and whats the significance of that, we always think 1954, but i had never paid attention to the specific date, but this was her brain child and all of of us collectionively, the Koch Foundation, Koch Industries, the center for advancing opportunity and the Thurgood Marshall fund, we are all committed to this work and i will not forget my good friend here from the charles Koch Foundation, brendan brown. Brendan, please stand up. [ applause ] none of this would happen without the three people who ive had the Great Fortune to work with in the case of dr. Payne for the last ten years and with my dear friends of Koch Industries and the charles Koch Foundation. It feels like just yesterday. So we are here today to really answer the question through a group of specially selected panelists and amazing keynoter, no pressure, steve, at the end of the day to explore brown versus board of education and whether or not the promise was fulfilled. Its a question mark and we were in design of this program today and the first center for advancing opportunity event and we intentionally wanted to get Historical Context and thats one of the things that we in the academy and those of us interested in making sure that we advance good policy that will really make a difference. We need to understand and put things in their Historical Context. So our first panel will be people who either themselves or through their families and their parents were part of the cases and companion cases and they were a part of the series of cases that ultimately culminated with brown versus board of education. The second panel will be going forward. Well look forward and well explore with people from the academy, people who are practitioners and the Charter School space and other Public School education space. We have to determine what really happened. We had a vision. All of us had expectations back in 1954. The question is fast forward, 63 or so years later and how did it all work out. Thats really what today is about and well do it with evidence and well do it with research and this will not be an emotional discussion where people have opinions that they cant support. That will really be the hallmark of the center for advancing opportunity. All of our work will be Research Based and it will be evidence based and we will be able to make a case for any position that we take, and i think and i hope that you will enjoy today because this is going to be a retreat. We hope that ultimately, this will serve as a model for discourse that should occur all over america where people take real data, real results and we can take good policy. We can be fairly assessed, whether or not what we thought might work, did work and thats what todays about in terms of, you know, exploring brown versus the board of education. So i have the Great Fortune. Im quite fortunate, i should say, to bring up our firstever executive director. Her name is jennifer whiter. Jennifer is someone i am so proud of. Do your miss america shake. Do your shake. Come on. Jennifer joined our organizational most a decade ago where she at one point was our chief Development Officer and worked with me and meredith and brendan and we workeded on designing this concept called the center for advancing opportunity. I was so pleased about two months ago when we announced the organization. Maybe three months ago that jennifer was named the executive director. She has a wonderful career first at the United Negro College fund and then at the Thurgood Marshall college fund. Graduate of syracuse university. Okay, syracuse. The orange thing is about all we have in common. Rough. Its been rough. I wanted you all to meet jennifer wider and shell take it away from here our executive director, thank you, jennifer. Thank you very much, johnny. Thank you. [ applause ] great. So thank you all very much for being here today at our firstever official event u our first symposium and today were asking the critical question was the promise fulfilled . The promise of brown versus board of education. I am so delighted to have this distinguished panel, three individuals whose lives and personal journeys and their careers have been impacted by the brown versus board of education decision. So before we get started, let me introduce our panelists. First on the right we have Miss Virginia ford. She has over 20 years of experience in education, and in 1998 she founded d. C. Parents for School Choice. Just last week the piece she wrote about the importance of access to education where she states that when it comes to Residential Real Estate schools often wind up linked to property values. Dr. Alonso smith is a history professor at Montgomery College and he was one of the curators for the 50th anniversary of the supreme Courts School desegregation decision. Thank you for being here, dr. Smith. Finally, seiku biddle is the vp of advocacy and hes also served on d. C. City council and d. C. State board of education. He also has over 20 years of experience in urban Public Education. Thank you all so much for being here today. Thank you. [ applause ] sgroo before we begin, i just wanted to make a note that at the end of the discussion we will open the floor to questions and there are microphones at either side of the room for you to be able to line up and ask questions, and ill let you know when the appropriate time comes. Okay. So we have multiple generations represented here today on the panel and that was important because we wanted to get different perspectives of their experience and so the first question that i would like to pose to each of the panelists is what were the barriers to education opportunity as you saw it either through your own personal experience or through your parents experience or through your families and communities before the brown versus board of education decision and ill start with you, miss ford. I grew up in little rock, arkansas. I was in the second round of kids that went to central after the little rock nine, but one of the barriers before brown is my dads story. My dad was from North Carolina where black kids could only go to the eighth grade, and he made his way somehow to alabama to go to skillmtillman institute. So my dad went to stillman at 13. I used to think i wouldnt let my 13yearold go anywhere, and he just left home and went to stillman and worked his way through and went to stillman Junior College and then went to flanders Smith College and ultimately, he became assistant superintendent of the Little Rock School district, but my life has always been based on my parents. My parents were both teachers and so the importance of education was just talked about all of the time in our family, and i watched my parents teaching in allblack schools where we went and again, when we got ready to graduate from Junior High School at the time, was there no middle school then. It was junior high, we expected to follow our older brothers and sisters to the black high school in little rock and what we were told is wed been picked to go to central to continue the desegregation process, and of course, we didnt want to go. We wanted to follow our older sisters and brothers to the black high school. So 130 of us went into central, and i guess this was after brown and thats what it led to. I was 6 years old when the little rock central was integrated by the little rock nine, but i remember even at 6 years old, i knew the importance of what was going on. I got it, even as a little kid. So we understood that this was a time when schools we needed to be in better education allen vie environments. Thank you very much. Dr. Smith. I grew up in Columbia Heights in d. C. So my first four or five years of grade school were at b. K. Bruce school, which is bruce monroe. People look at me and are surprised, but you know what the onedrop rule was. There was a school that we can see from our front porch, but i went in the opposite direction, ten blocks in the opposite direction to bruce and the white school was undercapacity. Bruce, at that time we had three shifts of students because it was so crowded and my mom was a member of an Organization Called a consolidated parent group which is headed by mr. Gardner bishop who had a barbershop on u street. Several of the kids i grew up with, you know, hugh price, his mother was a member and a number of other women, but it was a very Diverse Group because it was headed by a man who was a barber and there were women who were faculty wives various kinds of people, but i remember hearinging about this all the time. I think that what was going on, really, at the time, well be honest with you, i really didnt understand everything that was happening at the time except that my mom was doing something to help us out and my dad was okay with it and that she was going to naacp meetings and she said dinner is on the stove. Go get your dinner. He was okay with that. I remember a couple of times that charles houston came to the home and some of the Community Meetings and he lived across the street on the sham avenue, and i knew there were moment outsiouss going on and i really didnt understand exactly what was happening. So i had to be honest with you. I was a witness with history without really understanding what was happening. So thats my story, i guess. Thank you. Seiku . I grew up in Columbia Heights also and he talks about sherman avenue and New Hampshire avenue and my parents were here so we lived in that neighborhood growing up and so mine is sort of the next iteration in knowing what the history was and its all stuff you read in books and learn from your parents and the idea that there are segregated schools and i grew up in washington, d. C. And attended Public School and i started in Stephens Elementary School in foggy bottom which was the first school for blacks in d. C. And alice steel junior high and wilson, and they were all fully integrated, black, white, latino, and also integrated fairly deeply along income lines, as well, and you know, what we knew was that brown had happened and therefore had change the world around the way the Public Education is organized. In d. C. , part of the legacy was at times you had two separate School Systems operating and we had a lot of schools located in very close proximity to each other which were hard to understand, like, why do we have so many of them . Why are so many close together . We had the black school here and the white school here and never should the students meet. So you had to have those two systems operating, and so, you know, the story for us growing up was this was going to unleash and create these great opportunities for everyone and it was a lot about changing the systemic imbalance in the way skoos were funded and supported. Thats the world i grew up in and well talk more about what really happened. Thats a great segway to our next question because we now want to the move to brown versus board of education and the decision happens and some of us were aware and some were involved and engaged in the commune in helping to drive this movement. So for you and your families, what did that decision mean . What was the hope and the expectation around brown versus board of education . What was going to change in your lives . Well, you know, one of the things we hoped is that we would have a better opportunity to attend schools that had more resources for our kids. At least that was what my parents hope was. So when i went so central with this group, yes, we had more resources and they had an Amazing Library that i could not stay out of because wed never seen a library like that. All of the books were uptodate and it did bring back the resources that our parents wanted us to have, but it was difficult. It was tough. I mean, we we were invisible. Teachers wouldnt callous and we had to rely on those resources because we were not being taught well and we had to we oftentimes we were the only black kid in the class and they just ignored us. The kids made fun of us or talked about us and every single day for three years i got called an n word, and im pretty light, too, but hey, you know, one drop. And every single day for three years the black kids met at the corner of 18th and park to walk home together so we wouldnt get beat up. I was telling jim earlier. I called callott awols who was my cousin, one of the little rock nine, who was speaking on this panel and she said that they had the crowds. They had the federal escort, but they were invisible as well in class, and she said to make sure that that people understand that because brown, you know, became law or the decision was made that we would have equal education it did not mean that thats actually what we had. I struggled through high school and i came from a Junior High School where people really cared about what happened to us and everybody was involved in our educational experience and we were the top students at that school which is one of the reasons why the 130 of us were picked to go to central and our parents were teacherses and preachers and civil rights activists and we were we failed at central because we were not taught so we had to figure out how to be a part of of thattal and how to be a part of the educational experience. I think i counted down from tenth grade to graduation. Just courted nted it down. I didnt have a calendar, but i might as well have had one. All that said, we did have the Resources Available to us that we had not had at the black schools. We did have the books that were updated that we could selfteach and our parents who were teachers would help us. We did have this big reputation of having graduated from Central High School which probably help us when we were all applying for colleges. So the benefits certainly were there, but the inside story was difficult for us. Just a followup question, how long did it take for things to get better for students there . Central is 99 black now so its changed. When they did the 40th anniversary, was there some conversation about the fact that central was now 90 black and how that was going to look on the media, so i think they highlighted white kids which i thought was just tacky, but you know, it took many years. I was talking to my sisters friends who were three years behind us, and i was saying we had a rough time at central and she said we did, too. So we know three years hadnt changed and i remember one of the times i really got in trouble. My father was the first black s