CHICAGO – The Illinois Humanities Council (IHC) recently launched “Brown v. Board 50 Years Later: Conversations on Integration, Race, and the Courts,” a free, year-long series of programs going on around Illinois from April 2004-May 2005. As part of its efforts to ensure statewide programming opportunities to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, the IHC has added a collection of Road Scholars speakers bureau members who will speak on topics related to the struggle for racial and social justice. For a small processing fee, these speakers are available to any non-profit organization that wishes to host a high quality, public humanities program free for local audiences.

The new speakers and programs are:

Larry T. Balsamo , Professor of History at Western Illinois University

• Murder by Persons Well-Known: Jim Crow, Racial Etiquette, and the Lynching of Emmett Till
  
• Tear Gas and Magnolias: President Kennedy, Governor Ross Robert Barnett, James Meredith, and Integration at “Ole Miss”
  

Vernon Burton , Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Where and How Brown v. Board Began: Heroes of Clarendon County, South Carolina and Historical Memory
  
• The Voting Rights Act: It Must Not Have Been Humid Enough in the North
  
• Benjamin E. Mays: Godfather to the Civil Rights Movement and Mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr.
  

Janis F. Kearney , writer, lecturer, and formerly President Bill Clinton’s Personal Diarist

• Daisy L. Gatson Bates: Arkansas’ Unsung Hero
  
• The Clinton Presidency: An African-American Perspective
  

Sylvia Hood Washington , Professor at DePaul and Northwestern Universities

• Packing Them In
  
• Urban Conservation Movement
  
• Mrs. Block Beautiful
  

Stan West , author, journalist, filmmaker, and Professor of English at Columbia College Chicago

• A Biographic Journey Through Brown v. Board and Beyond
  
• A Humanist Looks at Integration
  

These new members to the Road Scholars roster have been added to the program’s standard offering of 31 speakers and 57 unique presentations. The Road Scholars program encourages Illinoisans to reflect upon the human condition from a range of perspectives by providing a distinctive forum for discussion and dialogue. The program places humanities scholars in diverse communities throughout the state where they give presentations on a variety of topics that include history, culture, literature, music, the environment, politics, ethnicity, anthropology, and archeology.

Booking a Brown v. Board Road Scholar is a simple process. Visit the IHC’s special “Brown v. Board 50 Years Later” website, www.bvb50.org, then click on Book a Speaker and follow the instructions. Note: Organizations that have reached their limit on program bookings for 2004 are eligible to apply for Brown v. Board Special Edition speakers .

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