(gentle jazz music) - My name is Kearstin Piper Brown.

I am a soprano opera singer.

I make my living here in Rochester, but mostly outside of Rochester.

And I am also a casual Classical host here at WXXI.

I'm coming on 10 years next month.

I can't believe I've been here for 10 years.

So, been enjoying WXXI and the community here.

Want to acknowledge my youngest here, Avery.

So he might be the youngest person in the room.

I don't know.

Made him come out, started school today.

And yeah, I just wanna... Obviously I am, well not obviously, I'm a proud Spelman College graduate.

(laughing) One of the best HBCUs, or I'll say the best HBCU since we are celebrating HBCU Week.

We can also just wanna mention that the new director, I don't think she's been in for a year, of the Legal Defense Fund, is my classmate, Karla McKanders, and she has some big shoes stepping into the shoes of Thurgood Marshall, and I'm very proud of her.

So just wanted to acknowledge, of course, great HBCU grads.

And I'm gonna allow our panelists to introduce themselves to you this evening, okay?

- Well, good evening everyone.

I am Judge Melissa Barrett.

I am the supervising judge of both Rochester City Court as well as all of the city courts here in the Seventh Judicial District, and I am a proud LDF Scholar alumni.

(audience clapping) - I'll also say, yes, I'm gonna say that I do know that Melissa, may I call you Melissa, I'm sorry.

- [Melissa] You absolutely can.

- Supports HBCUs.

Tell me how you support HBCUs in a big way.

- And this is the best thing that I like to share with folks.

I am the...

Absolutely.

And my husband is sitting out here, and I know he's proud too, but I'm a proud mama of two HBCU graduates.

My daughter Sydney is a graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana, and she has just started her first year of residency.

She's a physician here in Rochester.

And my son Will is a Morehouse man.

He's a graduate of Morehouse College, and he has just launched his career out in Los Angeles, in the world of finance after graduating from the University of Chicago this year.

So she supported HBCUs with her paycheck.

Absolutely.

Still supporting HBCUs.

Yes.

- Next.

- Hello, everyone.

I'm Shaun Nelms, I'm the vice president for community partnerships and special advisor to the president, the University of Rochester.

I am not an HPCU grad.

- [Kearstin] That's alright.

- I'm alright with that.

(laughing) But many family and friends, including my younger brother, attended Howard University and the fraternity that I represent was started at Howard University some years ago.

- Good evening.

My name is Spencer Ash.

I'm senior counsel at the law firm of Pullano & Farrow.

I'm a trial attorney here in Rochester with 20 years of experience.

I am not an HBCU alum, but I am HBCU adjacent.

My older sister went to Howard University, and it's just an honor and privilege to be here.

So, good evening to everybody and looking forward to the conversation.

- Thank you.

We have such a wonderful panel.

And may I ask, may I call you all by your first names?

- Absolutely.

- Okay, wonderful.

So I just kind of wanna set the stage a little bit for those of you who may not be familiar with HBCUs or understand, like, why an HBCU.

HBCUs have always been welcoming spaces for all by hiring some of the first Jewish faculty members from Europe who could not get jobs at predominantly white institutions, to hiring, or not hiring, but enrolling white women as some of their first students who were denied at other institutions.

I found out, fun fact, Howard University's first enrollees were five white women who happened to be the daughters of two of the founders.

So they were the first students to enroll at Howard University.

I was like, wow, that's interesting.

HBCUs were for all, but yes, they are, were and are meccas for Black folks.

Institutions like Lincoln University taught young Black men to love themselves.

At that time, Lincoln University was an all men's college.

It is now a co-ed college.

HBCUs were and are engines of change as described in the film by Charles Hamilton Houston, Black people coming together in their own institutions to solve the ills of society.

I myself fled to an HBCU very quickly, my mama couldn't catch me, to find a safe space to escape the racism and bigotry that I was experiencing as a high school student.

And today, HBCUs are seeing record numbers of applications submitted, especially since the murder of George Floyd.

And these young Black scholars are finding their mecca and safe space in higher education.

So Thurgood Marshall's time at Lincoln and Howard shaped his worldview alongside leaders like Langston, well alongside Langston Hughes.

I thought that was cool.

I didn't know they were classmates.

And Cab Callaway, who used to live over in Swillburg, right?

So I wanna ask our panelists, we see how culture, how the culture of HBCUs influenced Marshall.

Why is it so important to support these institutions today?

What do you think?

- You've been supporting HBCUs.

- Right, I'll start.

I think that that culture of excellence, that is the absolute pursuit of excellence, and not just pursuing excellence for a moment, but a lifelong pursuit of excellence.

A lifelong practice of being curious and wanting to understand the how's and the why's behind things, i think that is what HBCU encourages in students.

I also think it gives students the confidence to go forward in this world in their own skin, being who they are.

And that's something you cannot put a price tag on.

- [Kearstin] That's true.

- I heartily agree.

Many of my friends in education, many superintendents, the vast majority of them attended HBCUs.

And their orientation in this world was much different than mine was by attending a PWI, a predominantly white institution.

And I think it's because there was an emphasis, like in the film, about your own understanding of self, understanding the responsibility to create an epicenter of pride and success, not just for yourself, but for your entire community.

But then to bring people along with you and to expand that impact nationally, internationally.

And it's really interesting.

You can tell in those moments which students attended an HBCUs, which ones did not, by how they carried themselves.

And it's the reason why when my son was looking at colleges last year, we made sure that he attended as many HBCUs on his college tour as he did PWIs.

And it was because I understand going through my 30s and 40s, and entering my 50s, how long it took me to be able to feel secure in myself.

And I didn't want my children to be in their 30s and 40s and just figuring that out, so that community, as stated and noted in the film, it's real.

It does something when you walk into a space with a liberated construct, context.

- Well, I agree with everything that was said.

You know, I'm an urban suburban kid.

Grew up in the city of Rochester, attended the Pittsford School District from 1st grade through graduation.

Obviously went to college and law school, and was always sort of the one, the one guy in the room.

Still, as I practice in many of the courts in the state, even in city court, I'm one of the few African American male attorneys present.

In federal court I'm often the only one there.

That's including staff.

And I don't think that's any malice from the court's perspective.

It's just how it is.

We haven't scaled up.

And for me, I grew up with a very strong father who left home at 15 years old to segregated south of Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

He was born in 1938, joined the military when he was 15 years old.

You know, my mother grew up in Rochester New York, which, at the time she grew up in the 40s and 50s, was segregated.

People don't know that about this town, but it was segregated.

And I just had a really strong sense of self, so I never felt marginalized and I never felt out of place.

I think the environment I grew up with embolden me.

But I always wondered what it would be like to be in a milieu of Black excellence.

And I got that opportunity when I lived in Harlem on Striver's Row For a number of years with an uncle who was one of the first Black professors at the University of Connecticut.

I had a... Betty Allen who was a famous opera singer who was married to my uncle who was there.

So I had that sort of living embodiment of Black excellence in that household.

And then I went off to do a clerkship in Washington DC, and that was the first time I saw a Black suburb.

So, proximity to Black excellence.

Proximity to people who look like you, who work together, who thrive together, was very empowering to me.

And so I think...

I'm a big fan of diversity.

I'm a big fan of people not being sort of insulated in their own little pockets.

But I think you need to raise your children with a strong sense of self.

They know who they are and they walk through life with their backbone straight.

They're clear-eyed.

They shake people's hands with strength, and they know their names and they know their history.

And I think that's important.

And I think HBCUs provide that service to our community.

- Yeah.

I love the framing in this film of Thurgood Marshall as America's social architect.

I never really thought of it that way and made me think about, and this is a debate that maybe many of us in the Black community have about who is our social architect?

Who is our Thurgood Marshall?

Who is out there?

So curious, who do you all think is our social architect for Black people in America?

Tough One.

- You know, that is it.

- I knew someone was gonna say that.

- So, I'm not gonna name anybody.

Let me just say that right now, 'cause I am guided, I have a lot of prohibitions on what I can say as a judge.

But in looking and listening to the movie and really thinking about that, it strikes me that...

So I've been thinking about like, in the context of where we're at right now in 2025, and when you think about issues and the way that people approach issues, so much of it is guided by technology.

And when you think about how are issues framed, how do people center themselves within issues, there's no getting around technology.

And do we need guardrails around it?

Something to think about.

But you know, the folks, that are creating social media platforms, the folks that are creating AI, those are the platforms, those are the messaging tools for which people are using to organize, so when you think about a social architect, I'm not naming a name, but a entity, something that is where these issues are starting at, you can't ignore that.

So for me, in 2025, we would have to include technology, social media platforms, and AI.

- [Kearstin] I didn't think of it that way.

- That's an interesting question.

I think if you had asked my high school that same question, we probably would've rattled off 20 names and we would've probably had about 80% of the same names.

And I wonder if that's because certain individuals were identified and put on a pedestal as being the exception, as opposed to being the norm.

And I think that when we create individuals who are defined as a social architect, he would've never defined himself as that, right?

- [Kearstin] Right.

- And I wonder how many other people become marginalized and minimized in those definitions.

And therefore, the power, it becomes a power vacuum and that it doesn't impact all people.

What I loved about Thurgood Marshall is that the work that he did was selfless and he brought people along with him, if it was through the Legal Defense Fund, if it was teaching the young attorneys how to advocate.

In the film when they were describing saying, "Hey, you might have to sleep in jail over Christmas."

Like, there was a sense of empowerment and education that built a mass movement of social architects.

So not one.

I think, nationally and locally, nationally.

I love the work of Jim Clyburn.

I think that he... Why I appreciate his role in the House of Representatives is that he always gives a context of what happened previously in history, and how we have to organize and address it moving forward.

It's never about him.

It's always like you're in a classroom setting, learning about yourself, and then your obligation and commitment to doing this work.

I think there are local people like Dr Marilyn Paris-grant who I've watched her in rooms where she might be the only one, and bringing others into those spaces, educating people about how to be on different boards in the community, how to give back to the community in meaningful ways.

And so it's those individuals that I think are the true social architects because they understand that this job is not to be done by themselves.

And their greatest gift is their ability to create the next generation of social architects.

- [Kearstin] Love it.

- Yeah, I can't think of one person.

I thought about that question long and hard, and as someone who has been on a board of Lawyers for Learning, you go into the schools and you see the sacrifices of teachers and administrators who shape young people's lives every single day.

You look at the work of people, and food cabinets, and food kitchens, who do that work on a volunteer basis.

And it's silent work.

It's hard work.

Those people can be included.

But just to kind of give a blended response about the multiplicity of personalities, and AI and technology, folks who have really... One thing that struck me about this film, and struck me about the life of Thurgood Marshall, was how brave he was.

I mean, that was a grown man.

He was brave.

And so I think about people who risk political capital, financial capital.

They risk being deplatformed.

They risk their lives.

They risk their freedom to speak hard truths.

So I think of people like Madea Benjamin.

I think of people like Ta-Nehisi Coates.

I think of Norm Finkelstein.

I think of Marc Lamont Hill.

I think about Linda Sarsour.

I think about people who get out every day and talk about social justice issues.

They talk about geopolitical issues, and they catch a lot of flack for it.

And they put their lives on the line.

So I think there are a lot of people out here today that are carrying a torch of Thurgood Marshall and doing the really hard and heavy lifting of social justice.

- Okay, y'all threw out some names.

Okay.

Okay.

I love it.

My next question I wanna ask is, we know that Thurgood Marshall believed that the law was the strongest tool to achieve equality.

Do you think that the law is still an effective tool to achieve equality?

Or I would say equity at this point?

Why or why not?

- As a lawyer, I obviously do.

I mean, my life is trying to find solutions for people within the framework of the law.

And sometimes you're successful and sometimes you're not.

But, you know, a key component of that response, I have to preface that response by saying, you know, our civil institutions have to have credibility.

People have to believe in them.

People have to believe that the court is a place where there is fairness and equity.

Where they have access to it, and they will get a just result.

They have to believe that our lawmakers work on their behalf and in their interest, and that they're not somehow working for interests that, you know, are unseen or unrepresentative of what they want.

So as long as our civil institutions maintain credibility, I think there'll always be a place for social engineering through the law.

I think it's very important.

I think the law is a very powerful tool.

But I think the corollary to that is making sure that our institutions remain credible, and transparent, and accessible to people so that they have confidence in the result that those institutions, like the courts produce.

- So, I thank you for, I just wanna add onto that.

You just got my brain going.

So how do we get our communities to trust these institutions?

And I'll let you maybe come back to that.

So you're saying like, the law is still the best way, as long as we trust the institutions, but we see that through protest, and sometimes rioting, or whatever we're doing, we don't trust it.

And we can look on the news and maybe see why we don't quite trust it.

But how do we gain back the confidence in these institutions with the law?

I don't know if anybody wants to jump on it.

- I think your Honor's better.

(panel laughing) - I saw here kind of looking up.

- All right, so first I guess when this notion of the law is really interesting to me because it just seems so abstract.

So, the law.

For the first, I think we have to have a definition of that.

Really, what are we talking about?

Are we talking about our courts?

Are we talking about our laws?

'Cause our judges don't make the laws, our legislators make the laws.

So we've got to be able to...

I mean, I think that's where, and that's what Justice Marshall did so well.

He understood the laws.

- I'll say, I think I was referring to the laws.

- Okay.

And so he...

I was preparing for this evening, I was doing some research and I read something that said that when he was young, he was kind of a bratty kid.

Like he did a lot of talking back to his family.

He got in a lot of trouble.

And so as punishment his father would send him down to the basement and just say, "Go read those books down there, and read that one, the Constitution, and don't come back upstairs until you memorize a section."

And that's how he immersed himself into the Constitution.

And he used that later on in life.

So he understood.

He studied.

And I think that that's something that we really have to get back to.

So when you talk about the law and laws, we really need to understand that.

Now, in terms of, and I can go on about things that we're doing here in the Seventh Judicial District to sort of open our courts up to our community.

I was just on WXXI not too long ago talking about our judicial observation project here in the Seventh Judicial District, which is a collaboration with United Christian Leadership Ministries, where we have community volunteers engaged with coming into the courthouse over a seven month period to observe our judges, learn about our court system, and help our judges be better judges by identifying implicit biases that they observe.

That is the type of work that it's going to take to sort of pull back the curtain of this mystery and for people to really get back to the point of understanding that these courts belong to them.

So there are ways, there are things that are happening to bring the community in and to build that trust.

But it takes work on everybody's part.

You gotta be willing to engage.

- Yeah, I would only add, I mean let the experts answer that question, I would only add that I think Paulo Freire said it in his "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," that education is never neutral.

It's either an instrument for liberation or to domesticate and control.

And I think our lack of knowledge about the laws allows us to be domesticated and controlled.

And so I believe that how do we gain trust is we have to be more vigilant in making sure people understand what their rights are.

And not just by telling them, but like, Thurgood Marshall, showing them how to educate themselves.

I wouldn't say lock 'em in the basement to read the Constitution, but I'm (laughing) But I would say that they're, you see that in social media and technology.

You see attorneys and lawyers giving advice on how to present yourself if you're stopped by the police or whatever the case may be.

So I think that liberation is critically important.

And to that point, I'll just throw out a book that I found to be very interesting about how southerners who wanted to create an environment of white supremacy, how they did it through law and through policy.

And the author Steve Phillips makes the argument that we have to understand how it was done through law and policy in order to change that, to prevent us from taking a step back, and all the work that Thurgood Marshall and others have done to be reversed.

And name that book is "How We Win the Civil War."

And it's by Steve Phillips.

And I just think it's an amazing book, and it kind of walks you through the journey.

And then there's a book that happened that was also written about Brown too.

And it was "All Deliberate Speed" by Charles Ogletree.

And that book talks about the intentional ways of slowing down integration and slowing down progress through the court system.

And so the more we read and more we educate ourselves, I'm not an attorney, but I better how we have to position ourselves and our families and our children to defend what's rightfully theirs, to defend what these social architects created for them.

And to make sure that they fortify the foundation that was laid, and create new paths also, but really fortify what's been done.

And my fear is that we're watching some of these foundational principles be destroyed, and there's not a clear plan for attacking it.

And so I would just encourage people to dig into some of those readings.

- And I guess I'd like to just add that I don't think it's just in courthouses and in legislative buildings that we're going to move the needle on equality in 2025.

I think that has to be done across industries.

I think it has to be done on college campuses.

It has to be done in hospitals.

It has to be done in boardrooms.

I don't think we can limit it to just courthouses.

- Melissa knew what I was gonna say next.

Literally, my next sentence was gonna be, the law is but one tool for building a new social architecture.

So, we saw in the film that Marshall and the LDF worked hand in hand with communities, students, teachers, clergy, unions, activists.

Maybe an early example of what, I do some work in what's called collective impact, if you heard that word around Rochester.

Many people were willing to host legal teams in their homes, because restaurants and hotels were off limits to Black patrons, of course.

A lot of people were risking their jobs, losing their jobs.

Do you see similar coalitions of this collectivity forming in our country or our community today?

And what feels different about it?

What is maybe the same?

Or is it?

- I do see coalitions in our community and in our country.

This evening i would be remiss if I did not give a shout out to my sorority sisters, Dr. Harris and Dr. Bell Render, who are present here today.

We are members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated.

And we're all, and several of us here in organizations.

We're part of the D9.

That is a coalition.

We do a lot of work here in Rochester in terms of community service.

So there are all types of coalitions doing work behind the scenes that are helping to address issues here in our community.

And they are still needed.

- [Kearstin] Yeah.

- Since we shouting out fraternities, I mean, can't forget about those Sigmas in the house.

(laughing) But I do see it, and I think what I enjoy about what I'm seeing, it reminds me of what you described in terms of how people gathered in kitchens and homes.

And I have been to more, in the last four years, I have been to more intimate gatherings with folks who are like-minded, who are really trying to do the real work.

And it's not always about responding to something negative.

We're having discussions about building financial wealth.

We're having discussions about connecting our children over the summer so they can have their own circle of architects.

We are talking about a number of things.

How to travel and using credit card points.

So like, I mean, it's really a different orientation.

Like, our purpose for gathering is not from something that's traumatic.

It's to be proactive in ways that allow all of us to build one another, but to also celebrate all the progress that people have made for us, but all the progress that we've made for ourselves.

And we'll have our kids witness and see that.

And I do see that happening more and more.

And I think that some of the issues in America have almost forced that to happen, but I think it's forced to happen in very productive ways.

And I'm just, I'm happy for my friends and families who are part of that kind of quiet movement.

And it's not about being an elitist or being a separatist, it's just really being around good people, and good people who can laugh the same sitcoms that you watched growing up, or can finish the line in a song.

We need that.

I'll just share this.

My fiance is an ophthalmologist.

She's from Queens.

And when she came to Rochester, she said, "I never considered myself to be a Black ophthalmologist until I came to Rochester."

And I said, "What does that mean?"

She was like, "'Cause there's Black ophthalmologists all over New York City."

And she was like, "In this space it seems like there's so many firsts still happening," and she sees that as a deficit, right?

And so I think from a local community perspective, we have to think about that a little bit.

You know, how much of this, how much of this is happening because we've allowed it to.

How much of it definitely is systemic, but what is our role in making sure that narrative that Christine experienced is not experienced by my daughters or my grandchildren, because they're still firsts happening in this community.

So collectively we must build that, and that's what we're trying to do in these small gatherings.

- Yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of really interesting and exciting coalitions that happen all the time.

I think technology has been extremely democratizing.

I think information now that used to be held in bubbles is now communicated at lightning speed on all kinds of social media fronts.

And I think that's a tremendous organizing and centralizing tool that particularly young people are using.

When I think about going back a little bit, We Are the 99% protests, and Black Lives Matter protests, and the current protests going on with the situation in Gaza.

I mean, there are thousands and thousands of people around the country who are finding common ground, finding reasons to raise their voice, and sharing information, and sharing platforms.

So I think that's really important.

I think where the kind of drop off is, and you know, I have to indict myself on this too, as active as we all like to be, especially as African American professionals, our time is limited.

We have families, we have lots of commitments.

But I think sometimes the breakthroughs create a little bit of comfort and a less of a sense of urgency to do the kind of work that we saw being done with Thurgood Marshall.

And here's what I mean.

You know, you look at his family life, you look at the fact that he was raised essentially in relative comfort.

He had grandparents who owned major markets, but they had this really charitable impulse to them.

You know, they gave away food, they gave away wood, they gave away coal.

So it was a very sort of humanistic streak that they cultivated.

They wanted to give back to the community, they wanted to serve.

And he went off and he was a valedictorian.

He was an academic.

He did really well for himself.

He could have chosen a life of comfort, relative comfort in the context of segregation.

But he chose to go into really crappy environments, hostile, vicious environments for no money at all.

And he gave away, he was risking to give away his comfort and his security for something much larger than himself.

And I think at the top tier of what some would call the talented 10th, I think we do what we think is right, and we do what we think what we can do, but that's another level of the game.

And you know, I'm reminded of the quote that hard times make tough men.

Tough men make good times, and good times make soft men.

And sometimes we get our houses, and we get our cars, and we get our comforts and we forget that people bled for that.

And so we have to be reminded of that.

And I'm talking to myself first and foremost, we have to be reminded of that, that to whom much is given much is expected.

And that we owe a huge debt for our comfort.

And we have to wake ourselves up, get out of our comfy clothes, and keep digging, and keep doing that work because evil is so pervasive and resilient, and it keeps popping up, and you just have to be that stalwart on a wall, constantly beating it down, and that takes the effort of the best among us to do that.

And so I just don't ever wanna lose that spirit.

And these kind of films and the reminder of that history that we have, that shared history, is important to kind of wake us back up and get us reenergized.

- I think of Marshall and his colleagues working for little-to-no money.

Like, how many attorneys out here work, travel and sleep on somebody's sofa to go work on some legal.

I mean, when you talk about that comfort, how he sacrificed that comfort.

Again, it was early on, but he kept that spirit in the work that he was doing, because he saw that- - After someone tries to lynch you, are you gonna go back to work the next day?

(audience and panel laughing) He did.

- Speaking of, y'all be all in my head.

Hold on, hold on.

Here I go, here I go.

So here's a quote from Marshall.

He says, "To those of us who know the struggle is far from over, history has another lesson.

It tells us how deeply rooted habits of prejudice are, dominating the minds of men in all our institutions for three centuries, and it cautions us to continue to move forward lest we fall back."

Something that he said, he says that he didn't really see all the pushback that was gonna happen after Brown versus Board of Education and the Cooper versus Aaron, and then the 1957 incident at Little Rock.

All the tactics.

I guess, I don't know what he was seeing, but he was maybe seeing the greater good of America at this point.

He faults himself for not planning for this pushback and underestimated how virulent white supremacy had been existing in the country.

The picture of him waking up at night in cold sweats, envisioning his body dangling, and children coming, white children coming dressed in their Sunday best to take pictures.

That just kind of got me right there.

And then Sherrilyn Ifill points out that many Black Americans underestimate how deeply rooted white supremacy still is.

Do you think it's true?

And then, how do we wrestle with that reality in our daily lives and work?

And what do we do?

Big question.

- I mean, I think, honestly, this is my personal opinion, I think there's a huge spiritual problem with that level of hatred.

I think it's a demonic force, honestly When you look at the twisted kind of wretched faces of people who had been a part of carnival lynchings who would bring their children to see a man castrated, his body burnt, pieces of his body cut up as souvenirs.

You know, we have this very sort of weird thing we do in this country where we point our fingers at the barbarism of other people, and we forget what we put our own native sons through.

You know, my father shared stories about him walking to school with children in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

And some of them had no shoes on.

And a wealthier white family, they would walk past this like, sort of half wall, and they would come out every morning and put their young child on a half wall, and they would throw nickels and dimes at the Black kids, and they would laugh uproariously as they almost killed themselves for a penny or a dime or a nickel.

That's how my dad grew up.

You know, so we point our fingers at people and we forget our own history.

And that's, just kind of bring it back to the comment I just made, that's why it's so important to be vigilant.

When you think of white supremacy or you think of evil, what was essentially happening at that time was an apartheid.

And it was terrorism.

I mean, call it by its name.

It's domestic terrorism.

So I remember when I was in third grade at Barker Road Elementary School.

I'm really dating myself.

It's not even there anymore.

But I remember, no, but I remember a Jewish family coming in and we made latkes, and we put a little applesauce on it and we learned The Dreidel Song.

and we learned about the horrors of the Holocaust.

And I remember just feeling instinctively, like from my gut, I was a young kid, like, how could people let that happen?

I mean, how could people let that happen?

What did they do when that was happening?

I remember as an 8-year-old kid thinking that.

And you know, but I look at our own history, we bombed Tulsa, Oklahoma.

We bombed Philadelphia.

We mutilated and castrated Black people in this country.

And there's a genocide going on now.

I mean, it's the same spirit, no matter where you go, whether you're talking about Sudan or wherever you want to go, it's the same spirit.

It's the same energy.

So I think it really is a spiritual crisis.

I think we have to care more about people.

I think we have to love more.

And one thing about Thurgood Marshall's story that really struck me as an older dad of a 5-year-old, is that you have to pour love into your children.

And you have to teach them love.

He grew up seeing his grandparents give people food and give charity, and be kind.

And I mean, that really is, on a molecular level, that's where it starts.

So, yeah.

I mean, I think white supremacy, if you wanna call it that, is a huge problem.

But I think there's a crisis of the heart, and there's a crisis of the soul, and I think if we're not all careful, as we begin to aggrandize ourselves as Black people, it'll be like Animal Farm.

We'll get that same hard hearted spirit, and we'll forget the legacy of giving back.

So, I'll get off my soapbox.

- [Kearstin] You preaching right now.

(laughing) - If I had to critique that film in one minor way, I wish they would've used AI to make it all in color.

And I'll tell you why.

Thurgood Marshall died in 1993.

And when you see black and white, and kids see black and white, they see it from like a relic standpoint.

That was so long ago.

So what he was ascribing was in a lifetime of many folks in this room.

And so, as quickly as we want to put that history, not we in this room, quickly as someone want to put that history to bed, Thurgood passed away in '93, it's possible and likely that the little girl in that film that was smiling at the body hanging from a tree is still alive.

- Woo.

- Right.

- [Kearstin] A hit in the spirit.

- So has that demonic spirit left her body?

And how is she, or not, share that type of engagement with her kids and her grandkids?

That's the type of, that's the type of things that, that's what makes me most concerned is that we want to push through something that is very real in the lives of those who are oppressed, but those who are the oppressors.

And so that in itself concerns me.

And I wanna do justice and give that book that I mentioned earlier the right name.

I wrote it down because the title talks about white supremacy.

"How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good."

And I just encourage you all to take a moment to listen or read that book, because it really makes you think about how institutional this idea of supremacy is.

How it's baked into the fabric of this country, and what we must do, and not just here, but like internationally.

I took my mom to Ghana last year.

My mom was born in 1949, and Ghana became a free country in '57.

And I told my kids, grandma is older than a freed Ghana.

So this history is among us.

It's still around us.

And we have to be educated enough to know how to handle it, and how to push forward, and how to change that perspective, while also preserving and uplifting all that has been sacrificed for us.

- And I guess I'll just wrap that question up by saying, we have got to keep excellence first and foremost.

We cannot settle.

We cannot settle.

We cannot settle.

You know, I hear people saying, "Well, the value of an education is not so great anymore.

Maybe you shouldn't go on to college."

And I believe that that will do us no good in addressing equality in this country.

We have got to, and you say, what do you do first?

Does it exist, and what do you do?

Well, what do you do is you stop, you get a drink of water throughout your day, you step back, you count to 10 in your head, you take deep breaths, because it's hard.

It is definitely hard.

You prepare your children.

You tell them the truth, the realities of the world.

You get involved with your community, you get involved with your groups where you can be affirmed, because mentally it can be taxing on you.

But when you think about what we're doing now, and in the context of HBCUs, you hear, "Oh, this school is closing down."

"That school is closing down."

And I'm like 2025 when we have all these doctors, and lawyers, and all these Black professionals, how are we letting HBCUs close down when they were built by people who had nothing?

- [Kearstin] Right.

- So I think it's important, as hard as we think that we have it and the challenges that we have in our day-to-day lives, we don't have it nearly as hard as our forefathers had it.

- I'm a big fan of what the judge just said.

I mean, I think systemic racism is a thing.

We have to address it.

It's not a relic, as you said.

It's a real thing.

It's a living part of history.

But I think we do ourselves a disservice when we don't teach our children and remind ourselves of our own power.

And no matter what life throws at you, you know, my father's story, my mother's story, Thurgood Marshall's story lets me know that if you keep your head down, you have faith in the Lord, you work really hard, you keep yourself held to a really high standard, and you take responsibility for yourself, whatever barriers get put up, you're gonna be able to knock them down because life is a long, hard slog.

And if you have the will and the ambition, and you get with like-minded people and you push, no one's gonna hold you back.

And I mean, we've seen that.

I mean, I always marvel at our history because I think about, again, I always go back to my father's story.

Like, what does a Black man do, what does a Black woman do in 1938?

But they did.

My grandfather owned a farm.

I mean, he did, he found a way.

And I think, so when you say white supremacy and you keep the conversation stuck there, I think there's a part to play with institutional injustice.

But what I'm always, what I'm gonna tell my son, and what I'm gonna tell the young men and women that I go in front of is that you have been given immense power from the most high.

And if you believe in yourself and you don't let anybody break your spirit, you will prevail.

And that is a story and a mantra of hope that we have to give our children.

That's gonna push you through the dark times.

So I think it's a it's a double-pronged approach.

I think you attack the institutional inequality, but you also build your kid up, and you resource these kids, and you give them the lessons they need to be successful.

- Thank you, and I know we're a little bit over, but I do wanna just hear, I had one more question, but I do wanna, I wanna just ask the audience this question and maybe we just have maybe two people.

I think we have a, is this microphone for folks who wanna come up?

I wanna, I guess I invite you all to ask a question, but I do have a question for you all to ponder is what lessons from Thurgood Marshall's life can help us to continue to build a more just and equitable world for Rochester right now?

And again, this is a question I did have for our panelists, but I do wanna chance just to hear from the room.

Go ahead.

Tell us your name.

Valerie.

- Film, for me as a Rochesterian, is relevant today.

It's not antiquated.

What's antiquated is, is that we have not learned the lesson.

You know, you all, each panelist spoke about this.

Thurgood was very clear with, but we weren't prepared for after we won.

We are not prepared now.

We're not prepared now.

They are always planning, right?

And we are not.

We are celebrating the victory, not dealing in the reality of what we all know that we live in.

And I think that we are seeing it now in a more profound way with the way our country is actually being run right now.

So I just wanted to say, we, unfortunately Rochester is very similar to me as, like, a plantation.

And it has been that way for a long time.

There are remnants, but as each of you spoke, that's how Rochester, the core of Rochester actually operates.

Our young people don't have access in masses, in pockets, to the intellect that you all are giving, the wisdom that is still there from the remnant of our community that is still there to give it.

There are designed, Judge Barrett, you just talked about the importance of education, but how they're doing training now for apprenticeships and stuff, that's because of the labor market, and now they need us.

They need us now.

So now the importance of a college education isn't important.

And because we have not instilled that generationally in our kids, our kids are guided by, to the point that you're making, AI, social media, what's out there, what's the bullet right now?

Not having that yang to pull them back and go, "Wait."

And I think, 'cause I'm an educational advocate, I think that our children sense the ancestral experiences, and you see them acting out.

If any of you correct a young person and see them again, they will respect you.

They may not respect you, but they will respect you.

And that piece is a part of who we are.

And I think that, to the point that was being made, a lot of us are not brave enough to stand up, stand out, and actually bring our young people along.

- Yeah.

Thank you.

Did anyone else have a, either wanted to answer the question or have a quick question for one of our wonderful panelists.

And we're just all soaking it in.

- And I'll just respond to that quickly, 'cause I know you're an advocate 'cause I've worked with you a lot.

She's told me many times I was wrong and many times now I was right.

And you should know I love and respect her.

And I'll tell you, and going back to Dr. Koerner's, my fiance's comment about Rochester, and being a Black ophthalmologist here, there are examples of success in this community.

Some of the issues and obstacles that I've, and I'm not from Rochester, so I shouldn't say that, some of the issues and obstacles that I've observed is that when you're in a space that's been traumatized repeatedly, when something good come along, it seems as if people don't understand it and are less likely to accept it.

And I can only use example that I've been personally involved in the last 10 years, and that's working with the local high school, East High School and their graduation rates, and supporting that school community.

And I gotta tell you, the greatest challenges that I had were from people who promoted themselves as educational advocates.

The greatest support that I received from people who really wanted to invest financially, and socially, and spiritually because they understood that the cycle had to break because our community was breaking along with it.

And my biggest concern, my hardest takeaway from that transformative work is that those who fought the hardest against the progress were those who at one point were victimized by that same structure.

So they knew no better.

And, so I had to give them grace to say it wasn't about the University of Rochester, it wasn't about Sean.

It was what Thurgood went through when he first wanted to deny having Black professors at Lincoln.

He had to learn that he had power.

He had to learn that you have influence in moving change forward.

But then he was able to do that.

I think we're in that gray area between Thurgood's rejection of Black professors, and him creating an environment which he became the social architect for many, many Blacks.

So we have to move through that phase.

I think that's where Rochester is right now.

I think we have to believe that a solution that you didn't come up with isn't a bad solution.

That success that you don't get credit for is still successful.

I think once we get to that point, that's when Rochester is gonna continue to move forward.

And it's happened, it's been proven to happen in similar sized cities.

And I think the work that's happening, like this panel discussion today, is proof that there is a willingness and a desire to make it happen sooner than later.

- [Kearstin] Wow.

- I agree with your point.

There is a almost a generational trauma in this town.

I'm a townie.

I'm born and raised in Rochester.

And my mother was as well.

So from the history of the riots and the the burning down of Joseph Avenue, and different areas of the city of Rochester, to the long history of housing discrimination and redlining in this town.

I think that it was a report, a federal government report done in the 50s that said the housing discrimination and redlining was worse in some parts of Rochester than Mississippi.

And the role that some of our key institutions played in building that scaffolding and perpetuating it really passionately, I mean organizations that still exist, that we all know and love now, that were just bigoted.

There's no other way to put it.

So there is a generational trauma here.

But what I also know about this town is that there are a lot of great people here, there are a lot of great institutions here.

There's a huge long legacy of social justice advocacy.

And you know, again, I think there are people who are working to inspire our kids to keep pushing through.

And that's really the message that I want to leave for my son and leave with the young people I get in front of.

You do have the power.

Don't let circumstances, environment, geography, stifle your God-given destiny.

Understand that you are powerful.

And when you say, when you point to other factors for why you don't do the best that you can do, then you give away your power.

So I think we can do both.

I think we can deal with those systemic injustices.

We can deal with that palpable psychic trauma.

But we can move past it too.

So, I mean, I guess that's the last point I wanna make on that.

- And I'll let Melissa have the last word for the evening.

- You know, I guess it's, for me, would be how do we move forward?

Just in our daily lives, our daily walk, what can we do?

'Cause sometimes as individuals we feel powerless.

And I would just suggest and encourage that in your daily walk, and it doesn't matter what your lived experience is, there's some things that we can all do.

We can treat people with kindness.

We can treat people with dignity, with respect.

We can be curious and want to learn about other people, people who might not look like us, who might have different lived experiences.

And we can be compassionate.

That is what I would suggest that we all take away from this because I believe that that is how Justice Marshall lived his life.

- Thank you so much.

I wanna thank everyone again for coming out this evening.

I wanna thank our wonderful panelists for being with us tonight.

Our generous community sponsors, our national sponsors, and we couldn't have done this with all of your support.

On your way out, I don't know, do we have the survey QR codes this evening or will they be emailed?

I believe they're gonna be emailed.

Okay.

All right, on your way out you'll find a QR code.

We'd love for you to capture that to take a quick survey to tell us a little bit about your experience.

You'll also be receiving an email, I believe, through the Eventbrite email that you sent through Eventbrite to come here this evening.

We look forward to your feedback.

And take a look at wxxi.org/hbcu to see what else is going on.

I know the Morehouse Glee Club will be, or the concert will be airing a little bit later on this week, and we'll be screening "Becoming Thurgood" at wxxi.org, and there'll be flyers and information where you can pick that up.

And I must say, I'm looking at Basil here, Thurgood Marshall was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated, the first Black fraternity.

So I wanna say that.

So thank you all so much.

Thank you again to our panelists, and you all were wonderful.

Thank you for participating.

(panel and audience clapping) (gentle jazz music)