Civil rights activist uncertain about future
Speaker talks about segregation, affirmative action
By Lara Hendrickson
Staff Reporter

Chancellor Michael Ferrari welcomed Roger Wilkins to TCU Wednesday to talk about his relationship with Martin Luther King Jr., affirmative action and his experiences with segregation.

Wilkins, a writer, professor and civil rights activist, said the United States is in the middle of a “world revolution,” and that globalization requires leaders to be comfortable with people who have different views on what it means to be an American.

“We need to bring out the best in all of us and that’s what affirmative action aims to do,” he said.

Wilkins said affirmative action is important in schools and that his alma mater, the University of Michigan, is at a disadvantage because of its size.

“Smaller schools like (Texas) Wesleyan can go through applications by hand,” he said. “Gigantic schools have to go through them by computers.”

Wilkins said he is a co-chairman for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and that he knew King from the organization.

Wilkins said King was much bigger and more brilliant than his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

“I really hate that clip from that speech,” Wilkins said. “It reduces him to one speech, one time. He was a great orator and speaker. He was a great moral philosopher, strategist and a great leader.”

Wilkins also commented on segregation and said his daughters are growing up in a much different time than he did.

“When I was young, I didn’t think we would ever get rid of segregation,” Wilkins said. “I couldn’t imagine speaking at a school in Texas, and I couldn’t imagine my 19-year-old daughter going to the Mississippi Delta to do a research project.”

Students said the impact of Wilkins’ speech was huge.

CiAnn Ardoin, a junior radio-TV-film major, told Wilkins it was an honor to have him at the university and presented him with a purple-wrapped gift.
“This is an experience we can never get in the classroom or from reading a book,” she said.

Faculty members were also intrigued with his personal accounts of segregation. John Breyer, a geology professor, said he thought the speech was extremely powerful.

“My father was from that generation so I love hearing people talk about that,” he said. “I thought it was tremendous.”

Wilkins said he has mixed feelings about what will happen in the future.
“I think I am intellectually pessimistic,” he said. “There is so much human folly, ego and terrible human need ... our ability to damage the earth we live on grows and grows and grows.”

Wilkins said he believes anything is possible because he never would have imagined segregation would end.

“The greatest birth right we have is to be active participants in our fate,” he said.

Wilkins is currently a faculty member at George Mason University where he holds the Robinson Chair in History and American Culture. He is on the District of Columbia Board of Education and contributes to “The News Hour” with Jim Lehrer. He has served as assistant attorney general of the United States, won the Pulitzer Prize for his writings on the Watergate scandal and was on the editorial board of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Lara Hendrickson
l.c.hendrickson@tcu.edu

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