{"id":8222,"date":"2017-11-07T08:00:17","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T12:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/growpurpose.com\/charlestongood\/?p=8222"},"modified":"2017-11-05T16:35:29","modified_gmt":"2017-11-05T20:35:29","slug":"nov-14-living-your-truth-civil-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/charlestongood\/nov-14-living-your-truth-civil-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"NOV 14 – ‘LIVING YOUR TRUTH’ : Civil Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, November 14 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at Burke High School Auditorium, 244 President Street, The Social Justice Racial Equity (SJRE) Collaborative\u2019s Living Your Truth talks civil rights from the front lines with Dr. Millicent Brown & Armand Derfner.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Millicent Brown and Armand Derfner know what it is to be on the front line of civil rights battles. Dr. Brown was chief plaintiff, with ten other Charleston students, in the case that resulted in the desegregation of public schools in South Carolina in 1963. Mr. Derfner has argued multiple voting rights cases in front of the US Supreme Court, including Allen v. State Board of Elections, the first Supreme Court case to interpret Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 1969. Their conversation will be moderated by KJ Kearney, a local writer, speaker, and manager of Charleston Sticks Together promoting positive expressions of the Gullah Geechee culture.<\/p>\n

This is a free event. Registration is requested to help with planning.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

TheSophiaInstitute.org\/events\/living-your-truth-series-0<\/a><\/p>\n

The Living Your Truth series was developed to support the Sophia Institute\u2019s Social Justice Racial Equity (SJRE) Collaborative\u2019s commitment to to educate, challenge, and invite new understandings. More information about the SJRE Collaborative can be found at www.TheSophiaInstitute.org or by contacting its co-chairs Barbara Kelley-Duncan at kelleyduncan@bellsouth.net and Carolyn Rivers at info@thesophiainstitute.org.<\/p>\n

Look for additional conversations throughout 2018, starting with Lucille Whipper in January.<\/p>\n

\"22424327_10155670541291897_2760328421277124772_o\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaker Bios<\/strong>
\nMillicent Ellison Brown, Ph.D. is a Charleston native, whose mother served as comptroller at the historical, all-Black McClennan-Banks Hospital and Training School for Nurses, working for decades alongside her community activist husband. Brown’s father was not only a successful businessman but also leader in the Charleston and State NAACP between 1955 and 1965. After integrating Rivers High School, she went she went on to graduate from the College of Charleston and The Citadel, then receive a doctorate from Florida State University and teach U.S., women’s and civil rights history courses at multiple colleges. In 2006, Dr. Brown co-founded \u201cSomebody Had To Do It,\u201d an oral history platform for other \u201cfirst children\u201d around the country to share their personal experiences on the front lines of integration. Reverend Nelson B. Rivers III describes Dr. Brown \u201cYes, somebody had to do it, but it had to be the right somebody. Millicent was the right somebody. She\u2019s the first to say she wasn\u2019t the only one. And she came out of that experience and is still involved, still engaged, adding voice and light to ongoing work for social justice. She has the stripes of the struggle. She speaks out of experience, a living history lesson that can set the record straight.\u201d Dr. Brown is a board member of the SC American Civil Liberties Union, and a member of numerous organizations supporting quality public education for all students.<\/p>\n

Armand Derfner began his fifty-year legal career registering black voters and defending civil rights activist in 1960\u2019s Mississippi. Since then he has been involved in numerous other civil rights and public interest cases, including successfully representing civil rights demonstrators, death row inmates, victims of employment discrimination, targets of free speech restrictions, and community organizations seeking to advance the public interest. Mr. Derfner has helped shape the Voting Rights Act through his Supreme Court arguments in several of the earliest cases, including Allen v. State Board of Elections (1969) and Perkins v. Matthews (1971) and has recently argued against Voter Photo ID laws in multiple states. He shares Dr. Brown\u2019s commitment to desegregation and the end of racial inequity in education. His work on a 27-year class-action lawsuit over Mississippi’s treatment of the state’s black college students and its traditionally black universities earned him a Litigator of the Year award from the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice. A resident of Charleston since the early 1970\u2019s, he has challenged County Council’s at-large system of elections, defended the Charleston 5, and argued that County Council violated the Constitution by posting the Ten Commandments. This past spring, he presented arguments to the Circuit Court challenging South Carolina\u2019s Heritage Act saying its two-thirds legislative majority requirement provides an \u201cartificial barrier\u201d that denies citizens their democratic right to consider changes to Confederate flags and various monuments. Like Dr. Brown, Mr. Derfner\u2019s commitment to social justice and equality comes from his parents and their flight to America from Hitler\u2019s army in Poland and Paris: “In my family, there’s always been this sense that there is supposed to be justice in the world, and we’re supposed to help people get it.”<\/p>\n

The Social Justice Racial Equity Collaborative<\/strong>
\nThe Social Justice, Racial Equity Collaborative, convened by The Sophia Institute, seeks a just, sustainable, and thriving community where all people are empowered to fulfill their human potential. With its 37 member Council and multiple Engagement Partners, the SJRE Collaborative works from the inside out to recognize a healthy, diverse, and inclusive community grows out of an acknowledgement of interdependence and shared humanity. By addressing the challenges that emerge from structural and institutional racism, the SJRE Collaborative is working to transform Charleston into a more just and equitable place to live, work, and thrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, November 14 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at Burke High School Auditorium, 244 President Street, The Social Justice Racial Equity<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1600,"featured_media":8223,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,24,3,34,19,8,21,10,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/charlestongood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/charlestongood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/charlestongood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/charlestongood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1600"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/charlestongood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8222"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/charlestongood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8279,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/charlestongood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8222\/revisions\/8279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/charlestongood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/charlestongood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/charlestongood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/charlestongood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}