The Berklee community reflects as the college marks the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision.

By Kerry Malloy and Rob Hochschild
Berklee.edu Staff
December 22, 2004

	Lawrence Watson (right) speaks to the audience while Cecil Adderley looks on.
	Photo by Nick Balkin

That game of tag still serves as a sadly accurate image of America's road to racial equality: slow progress, interrupted by shocking reminders of how far we have left to go.

Watson and several other faculty members recounted similar experiences during a symposium titled "The End of Educational Apartheid," held by Berklee last month to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision. The faculty members who spoke during the event all grew up in the years following the court case, which paved the way for the desegregation of American schools.

"What Brown v. the Board of Education, as well as affirmative action, has done is it opened a door and shocked America to see that many of us who they never thought would be able to succeed, succeeded against all odds," Watson said during the symposium, which was held next door to Berklee at the Massachusetts Historical Society. "We can look at that, in many instances, as an accomplishment, as something to look towards as positive. But at the same time, we have to recognize that after Brown v. Board of Education, we still have a very long way to go."

Speakers besides Watson who shared personal reflections were faculty members Carolyn Wilkins and Kathryn Wright; Kenn Brass, chair of the Professional Music Department; and Roger H. Brown, president of Berklee. The panel was moderated by Cecil Adderley, chair of the Music Education Department. Harvard Law School faculty member David Wilkins, former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, opened the program with a brief history of segregation in the U.S.

Carolyn Wilkins, associate professor of ensemble, grew up in an African-American section of highly segregated Chicago, but received a better education than some, due to the perseverance of her parents. "They hounded and badgered a private school into accepting me," said Wilkins, a jazz pianist and vocalist. "I went to school with white kids, Jewish kids. One of my best friends was from Sweden, another one from India…I don't ever feel less than or less well-prepared or less able than any white person or any other person…In many respects, my educational experience as a youngster reflects some of that bright promise that I'm sure (Thurgood Marshall) had hoped for and that people struggled for."

Kenn Brass (left) gives his presentation. Next to him are Carolyn Wilkins (center) and David Wilkins (right). Photo by Nick Balkin

After Wilkins left college to study classical music and begin her career, she found that, despite the ways that music helped bring people together, she nonetheless encountered some of the same old problems. "I had positive experiences being part of the brotherhood of music, seeing how everyone could be one under music," she said. "The promise and the beauty and the healing power of music is there to unify people. But right underneath, you also have a lot of attitudes and expectations that people carry around that they don't even know they have…including fierce racism and sexism from teachers, fellow students, and later, colleagues."

Reporting from another side of the issue was Kathryn Wright, associate professor of voice, a white woman who was raised in North Carolina. Throughout her youth, Wright witnessed prejudice, even in her own family. After the public schools in her hometown were desegregated, residents of the town hastily built a private high school to maintain some degree of segregation.

Wright attended the integrated public school. She said the changes initially made most people feel uncomfortable. "Everyone was on edge, anxious, expecting something happen, a fight, a riot," Wright said. She immediately saw the benefits of bringing the races together.

"I looked around the room and I was one of two or three white students," Wright said about attending homeroom on the first day after desegregation. "Everyone else was African American, including the teacher. That was very weird for me. I had never been surrounded by people of other races. I had always been surrounded by whites. So that was very curious, and really good for me to see what it was like."

After receiving her bachelor's degree, Wright went to Yale to study opera in graduate school. On a return drive home in the 1970s, she was stunned to receive stark notice that racism was still prevalent. "As I entered the city, I saw a billboard I had never seen before: 'Welcome to Rocky Mount. You're entering Ku Klux Klan country.' I was horrified. This is my home…I'm glad to say that I've seen some changes since that time, but I'm still praying for a lot more changes to come."

Chicago-born Kenn Brass told the symposium audience that whenever he encountered difficulties in life, he would ask his father for advice, but his father would typically urge his son to take responsibility for finding his own solutions rather than expect someone to give him easy answers. That ethic came in handy when Brass attended a high school for gifted students that was 99 percent white.

"Music became a part of my life because I had to get away from the stereotypical," Brass said, adding that he bristled at the school's requirement that he must try out for every sports team even though he didn't have the skill or desire for most of them. Brass did enjoy playing football, but his real passion was for the trumpet, despite a band instructor's attempt to dissuade him. "No, your lips are too large. Play the tuba. Play the euphonium. ‘No, I'm not going to do that. I can't take this. And why can't I?'" The fact that Brass became one of the best trumpet players in school not only proved his teachers wrong, but showed that his father's counsel to stand up for himself was paying off.

Brass and his fellow students protested against the lack of Afro-centric classes and other prejudices against African-American students. Once, after telling a principal about racist remarks made by a white music teacher, Brass and his classmates were suspended. But the story was covered in the press, the teacher eventually retired early, and Brass felt he did the right thing. He urged students, faculty, and everyone else in the audience to also heed his father's advice to take action. "What are you going to do?" Brass said at the end of his presentation.

	President Roger Brown (left) talks about his school experiences in Georgia while Kathryn Wright listens.
	Photo by Nick Balkin

"The turning point in my development as a human being when it came to this issue was that I had been told by all the white adults in town that they weren't really against black people, just against the dilution of the quality of education we'd get when all these black students and teachers were brought over here," Brown said. "But the best teacher I ever had at that public school was Marcellus Barksdale, who is now the chairman of the African-American Studies Department at Morehouse College."

As students in the town began to make connections across the racial divide, one area in which they often differed was music, President Brown said. There was a jukebox in his high school cafeteria. The black students liked to play two songs, "Back Stabbers" and "Smiling Faces Sometimes," and the white students would respond by selecting "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." Brown described this war of lyrics as "part of the soundtrack of my high school experience."

Despite the dire predictions he heard from whites fearing negative effects of desegregation, Brown said it immediately led to the region's most prosperous growth. "What's most interesting to me as we think about this today is if you had listened to the white politicians and the white town leaders and the white adults around me, you would have thought that when this happened, the South was going to just completely turn into ashes, melt and fall apart, and it was going to be the worst thing that ever happened," Brown said. "Ironically, right after school desegregation came the greatest affluence and economic success the region had ever experienced."

After the speakers completed their presentations, they took questions from the audience of students and other members of the community. One student asked about Berklee's mission statement and how the college planned to tackle diversity issues.

"We, Berklee, just collectively at this point in time are in a position of flux and change greater than we have ever been because now we have a new president. We're in the process of formulating what is going to be the vision for the college," said Carolyn Wilkins. "This is the first time, to my knowledge, that we've ever tried something like this, to really talk about this. I'm hopeful that this new vision will incorporate an increased diverse presence both of students, faculty, administrators, and staff, and increased openness in our discussion of these issues."