From the The Capital-Journal: U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder and his wife, physician Sharon Malone, will be the keynote speakers for the commemoration of the 57th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that dismantled the legal framework for racial segregation in public schools.
Holder and Malone will speak at a banquet, sponsored by the Brown Foundation, at 7 p.m. May 17 in the Regency Ballroom at the Ramada Hotel and Convention Center, 402 S.E. 6th.
The banquet also will feature music by R&B singer-songwriter Kelley Hunt and the Max Roach Tribute Band, led by David Basse. Gregg Carroll, director of the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Mo., will be the guest host for the evening.
Reservations are $40 per person and are being accepted until May 12.
Cheryl Brown Henderson, president of the Brown Foundation, said the foundation began hosting annual commemorative events in 1989 as a means of reminding citizens of the significant role Kansas played in laying the groundwork for the modern civil rights movement.
"In 1951, the NAACP assembled families in Kansas, Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington, D.C., to join in a legal challenge to racial segregation, which resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education," said Brown Henderson, the daughter of Oliver Brown, the namesake of the landmark case.
"The appointment of Eric Holder as the first African American to serve as the U.S. attorney general and the civil rights activism of Dr. Malone's family leading to the integration of the University of Alabama are part of a contemporary historic continuum that began with the case."
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