wfn.org | [ENS] Memorial lecture set to address global environmental justice

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Daybook, from Episcopal News Service

November 15, 2005 - Tuesday to Note & To Read

Memorial lecture set to address global environmental justice and racism
Richard Parker guest speaker at annual Jonathan Daniels Memorial Lecture

[Episcopal News Service] The 14th annual Jonathan Daniels Memorial Lecture
will be held on November 17 at Episcopal Divinity Seminary (EDS), in
Cambridge,  Massachusetts, with guest speaker Richard Parker, a senior
fellow at the Shorenstein Center, John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University.

Daniels, a 26-year-old Episcopal seminarian, answered the call of the Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to help register African-American voters in
Alabama, only to be shot and killed months later, on August 20, 1965,
while shielding 16-year-old Ruby Sales from the shotgun fired by a
sheriff's deputy.

He was declared "a martyr and witness to the Gospel" and in 1994 his
name was added to the Episcopal Church calendar of saints and martyrs,
to be remembered on August 14 each year.

In 1991, EDS class of 1966 established the lectureships to honor Daniels'
courageous witness and to remember their friend and classmate. The
lectures aim to assure that the wisdom of those who continue the struggle
for justice will be heard. They also represent the longstanding commitment
of EDS and its alumni to civil rights, social justice, and peace -
commitments for which Daniels lived and died.

This year, in celebrating the life and witness of Daniels, EDS, Boston
Theological Institute, and the Bread for the World Institute have combined
this commemorative lecture with the Faith and the Millennium Development
Goals lecture series.

Under the theme "Global Environmental Justice: Combating Racism to Ensure
Environmental Sustainability," Parker will address the goal of ensuring
environmental sustainability, while speaking about a new global racial
injustice: environmental racism. From his experience as an activist,
economist, scholar, and person of faith, Parker will also offer ways to
ensure justice and a safe and sustainable global environment for all.

A question and answer period and a reception will immediately follow
the lecture.

For information about the reception email Alcurtis Clark at aclark@eds.edu
or call 617.868.3450. For information about the Jonathan Daniels lecture
email mphillips@eds.edu or call 617.868.3450 ext. 514.

Note: The following titles are available from the Episcopal Book/Resource
Center, 815 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10017; 800.334.7626;
http://www.episcopalbookstore.org/

To read: SILENT COVENANTS: Brown v. Board of Education and the unfulfilled
hopes for Racial Reform by Derrick Bell (Oxford University Press, New
York, New York, http://www.oup.com 2004, 230 pages; $14.95.)

>From the publisher: When the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown vs.
Board of Education was handed down in 1954, many civil rights advocates
believed that the decision, which declared public school segregation
unconstitutional, would become the Holy Grail of racial justice. Here,
Derrick Bell shatters the shining image of this celebrated ruling,
maintaining that the Court should have determined instead to rigorously
enforce the "equal" component of the "separate but equal" standard.
Racial policy, Bell maintains is made through silent covenants - unspoken
compromises of interest that include involuntary sacrifices of rights -
which ensure that polices conform to a pre-determined set of priorities.
The experience with Brown, Bell urges, should teach us that meaningful
progress in the quest for racial justice requires more than the assertion
of harms.

In Silent Covenants, Bell condenses more than four decades of thought
and action into a powerful and eye-opening book certain to stir debate
over an issue long thought to be beyond dispute.

Derrick Bell is Visiting Professor of Law at New York University Law
School.  As an NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer, he handled and supervised
hundreds of school desegregation cases during the 1960s. He is the author
of several books, including Faces at the Bottom of the Well.

To read: FREE AT LAST: A History of the Civil Rights Movement and Those
Who Died in the Struggle by Sara Bullard (Oxford University Press,
New York, New York, http://www.oup.com 1994, 112 pages; $12.95.)

>From the publisher: In Montgomery, Alabama, in 1989, a memorial was
built to commemorate the achievements of the civil rights era and to
honor those who died during that struggle. A few of the victims were
well known - Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr. - but there were many
whose names you could not find in the history books: John Earl Reese,
Willie Edwards, Clarence Triggs.

Along with a history of the civil rights movement, the stories of those
who died are told here. Their lives serve as examples of the many personal
tragedies suffered for a movement that transformed America from a society
in which blacks were routinely excluded from full citizenship into one
that now recognizes, if it has not entirely realized, the equal rights
of all citizens.

Sara Bullard worked as a feature and investigative journalist in Fort
Lauderdale, Baltimore, and Boston. She has also published articles in
Educational Leadership, American Vision, The New York Times, and many
other publications, and her fiction has appeared in Southern Humanities
Review.

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