Le Moyne Will Commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day with Two Events with a Common Theme – Lost Generations and Lessons Learned: Reflecting on 70-Years of Brown vs. Board of Education
Le Moyne College will celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with two separate events that will take place on consecutive days.
On Wednesday, Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. in Grewen Auditorium, there will be a screening of the documentary The Tower Road Bus. Directed by Professor Mike Streissguth of Le Moyne’s communications and film studies department, the documentary details the experiences of students, teachers and administrators on the frontlines of public school integration in Prince George’s County in Maryland during the 1970s. Attending the screening will be 89-year-old Dotson Burns Jr., the first African-American principal of an all-white public school in Prince George’s County, which was the largest school district in the United States during the 1960 and 1970s. Burns is featured prominently in the documentary.
On Thursday, Feb. 8 at 4 p.m. in the Panasci Family Chapel, Le Moyne’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. convocation will take place, when Terence Hicks, Ph.D. will speak on “Brown vs. Board of Education: A Direct Descendant’s Journey.” Hicks, whose research focuses on the legacy of segregation in education, is the child of parents who were shut out of public schools in the 1950s after the commonwealth of Virginia closed schools rather than comply with the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Burns will attend and also speak at the MLK convocation.
A child of Jim Crow Texas, Burns is a pioneer in school integration. In 1959, he began his distinguished career in education in the Washington D.C. area, serving on the frontlines of public school integration as the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954) began to take effect in the region. In Prince George’s County, Maryland, he taught at a segregated elementary school and, later, was often called upon to be among the first to integrate the teaching ranks in previously all-white schools. In 1974, in the midst of new school busing initiatives, he became the first African-American principal of a majority-white school in the county. The former superintendent of Prince George’s County Schools declared, “He was a kind man and cared about the young people, and it made the young people respect him greatly which you need when you’re trying to get people to go to places they don’t want to go which was part of the desegregation.”
Hicks is an experienced social scientist who has over 20 years of service as a research professor. He is a noteworthy scholar who has conducted research analysis on college student self-efficacy, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) research, college retention, high school to college transition, spirituality among college students, psychological well-being of first-generation college students and administrators in higher education. An award-winning author who has published 10 books on the college student population, he has been interviewed and cited in Diverse Issues in Higher Education, USA Today, Research Alert National Yearbook, Detroit News, Fayetteville Observer, Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Johnson City Press and many university websites, peer-reviewed journals and books.
