Symposium celebrates 100 years of trials, successes for NAACP

Racial barriers in education continue to exist more than 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down separate-but-equal schools for blacks and whites and more than 30 years after forced desegregation, according to panelists at a University of Virginia symposium.

Educators said that, while actual segregation has been eliminated, de-facto segregation still exists.

They note higher dropout rates for blacks and a greater number of white students in advanced courses that prepare them for a college education.

“Ultimately, [Brown v. Board of Education] did not desegregate the schools,” said Mildred W. Robinson, a UVa law professor, who noted that federal laws passed in the 1960s eventually eliminated institutionalized segregation. “Segregation exists today in that black students have been disproportionately locked into lower achieving or non-achieving educational tracks in schools, in the [drop-out] rates in schools.”

Robinson did credit the 1954 federal lawsuit and desegregation efforts that followed with improving relationships among the races.

“This country is a different place than it was 50 years ago,” she said. “The dismantling of the overt racial barriers allowed, for the first time, the creation of a national identity. The election of Barack Obama as president is an example of that.”

Robinson’s comments came at a symposium recognizing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s 100th anniversary.

The trials, successes and goals of the organization are the topics of the two-day symposium at UVa, sponsored by the university’s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies. The institute provides research fellowships at the pre- and post-doctoral levels for applicants from around the world.

“The NAACP is so important because this is the oldest civil rights organization in the country: There has been no organization that has worked this long and done so much and had so much impact on the nation,” said Deborah McDowell, director of the Woodson Institute.

The symposium began Thursday with seminars on racial equality movements in the South, the legal campaign against segregated schools, NAACP efforts in post-segregation society and a keynote dinner speech by Julian Bond, a UVa professor, longtime civil rights advocate and NAACP chairman.

It continues today with seminars on labor movements, the current national efforts and the NAACP’s history.

Todd Jealous, NAACP president and CEO, will join Bond for much of today’s activities.

“The organization’s relevance in Virginia is especially important to note,” McDowell said. “The NAACP led many of the advances that led up to Brown [v. Board of Education] and the desegregation of schools. Its relevance is expansive. It dealt with racial segregation and school segregation. It’s dealt with residential segregation, the forming of restrictive covenants on deeds and property that kept blacks out of communities. It has worked nationally and internationally. The list has gone on and on and on.”

Challenges, however, still exist.

“Does the NAACP have to refit itself to meet a variety of changes in our society? Yes. It has … weighed in on matters of importance in the past and continues to do so,” McDowell said.

Robinson told the symposium that efforts by the organization and civil rights leaders across the country can still make great changes.

“We can, eventually, in the long run, get past race,” she said. “When we get past race, we can get to our humanity.”

Today’s events are free and open to the public. For more information, visit artsandsciences.virginia.edu/woodson.