Vonya Lewis, a History professor who has been with the school for 12 years, was thrown into the spotlight to speak for the Martin Luther King Jr. Sinclair Talk. The talk was titled 150 Years of Civil Rights in 40 minutes.
Lewis said that discussing civil rights in 40 minutes will be tough.
“Covering 150 years of civil rights is difficult in 16 weeks so I know it will be difficult to do in 40 minutes” said Lewis.
Lewis said how Africans have been fighting for civil rights the very day they were brought to the shores of America against their will. She said that they aren’t fighting for God given rights, but the rights given to every other American.
“The law cannot change how I think about this young man. The law can keep me from lynching this young man. The law can keep me from not hiring this woman,” Lewis said. During the talk, freedom of speech was brought up multiple times. She used Sony and the Eric Garner case as an example. She noticed how people were trying to get Sony to release the movie, “The Interview,” and how they should not allow North Korea to take away their freedom of speech. She said that 99.9 percent of people protesting in New York, who held up the “Kill Cops” signs would not actually kill police officers. She acknowledged that even though she does not agree with every Supreme Court case, she said she understands that the men and women of the court have a very difficult job, and it is hard to draw a line.
During the presentation, she brought up the Plessy vs. Ferguson case in 1896. She said that the case made black people and white people separate, but still focused on equality, such as different schools, water fountains and other places. However, she viewed it from a different perspective.
“It was not all bad,” Lewis said.
She brought attention to a quote from Darlene Clark Hine: “Black professionals identify the Achilles’ Heel of white supremacy. Segregation provided black people the chance, indeed the imperative, to develop a range of distinct institutions that they controlled. Maneuvering through their organization and institutions they exploited the fundamental weakness of the separate but equal system.”
Lewis used another example to showcase Civil Rights. Brown vs. Board of Education ended segregation between black people and white people. She said she often asks her class,
“was this the right decision?”
Lewis said most people of color, still go to school with people of color. White people still
go to school with white people. Many people of color live in a school district with poor funding, unlike white people. She said when it happened, a lot of white people did flock away from Dayton to Englewood, Vandalia and Oakwood, and took companies that were once in the city of Dayton to other locations away from Dayton. She said there is no right answer.
Open discussion was encouraged at the end of the talk regarding the John Crawford case, and brought up the cops, along with the 911 caller who claimed that the man was pointing a gun at children, when video surveillance clearly showed he did not.
Lewis provided different perspectives on cases in the past that some people might not have thought of before, such as her perspective that segregation was not all bad. During the talk, Lewis’s goal was to get a sense that we, as a society, are moving towards being equal, but improvement is still important.
Matt Summers
Reporter