I am well-aware of the appropriateness of this forum. Harvard University is the school of George Lewis Ruffin, who, in 1869, was the first African American to graduate from its law school, W.E.B. DuBois, Ralph Bunche, Judge William Hastie, Professor Charles Hamilton Houston, Pulitzer Prize winner James McPherson, and many other historically important African American leaders.

It is easy to say that phrase "the school of." But there were lots of places—most places—that didn't want to be "the school of" any of these great Americans. Harvard opened its doors when most other universities kept them shut tight. This university offered educational opportunities to African Americans long before they could sit at lunch counters or ride at the front of the bus in many southern states. Again and again, I've heard of the gratitude of African Americans for this safe haven of scholarship: the peacefulness of the quad, the bliss of study in Widener Library, and the careful mentorship of legendary professors like William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., William Castle, or Henry Gates.

I am honored to speak here because this university has kept faith with African Americans.

So it is proper that this university host a celebration of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. We are mindful of the courage, vision, and boldness of the Warren Court's unanimous decision on that fateful day: May 17, 1954.

Yes, we applaud the decision because it ended segregation. Yet, it did so much more. It began a process of healing in America, still needed almost 100 years after the Civil War. The Brown decision affirmed the constitutional promise of equality and justice for all Americans. It overturned laws that denied the humanity and freedom of millions of Americans. It set this country on a new course, affirming civil and human rights while demanding the full respect and protection of the law for all people. Brown was proof positive of the genius of the American constitutional system, vindicating the trust and confidence in the judiciary that was voiced early on by John Jay and James Madison, almost 200 years after the fact. Brown was a decision of courage, conviction, and constitutionality. It was one of the finest moments of the American judicial system.

And as Professor Charles Ogletree has noted in his recent book on Brown, the case featured the first "Legal Dream Team": Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, William Coleman, Spottswood Robinson, Jack Greenberg, Robert Carter, Jack Weinstein, Constance Baker Motley, and others. And there were consultants like Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph, and Roy Wilkins. I would venture to say that no other Supreme Court case in history featured such a high-powered brain trust.

In my view, the Brown v. Board of Education case is one of the most important decisions in our history. I am not a lawyer or historian. But the best law is understandable and evident to everyone, not just those with legal training. As someone who lived through segregation, I know that Brown made our country more equitable, more just, and more decent.

In the 1950s, this country suffered—and I mean that, it suffered—because of its racist history. Racism is more than geography, more than unfair laws, and more than history. It is a mental and social disease, a manifestation of ignorance and hatred. It is a threat to our collective sanity, a damning critique on our culture, and subversive of our constitution. Because of slavery, it is unavoidably rooted in our national history.

Like many of you, I know firsthand the powerful grasp of segregation on the minds of millions of Americans, people who otherwise were often pious, law-abiding, sometimes well-educated, and many well-intentioned. Some of these people were my neighbors in rural Mississippi. For them, segregation was part of a natural order, a way of life, a mind-set about race and ethnicity. They believed, as had generations of Americans before them, that segregation was acceptable, legal, and in the best interests of everyone. It was something they couldn't imagine questioning.

I wonder if people who haven't lived through it can imagine segregation. It offered no hope, no opportunity for change, no trust, and no humanity. It reached into every home and place of business in Mississippi and throughout the South. The schools bred racism—actually encouraged it. Children were taught that separate facilities were educationally necessary and that unequal treatment was somehow manifestly good. Whites were told to fear blacks, that we were not fully human. There was institutional re-enforcement in restaurants, transportation, and higher education. I know: I had to attend Jackson State, an all-black school, because I couldn't go to Ole Miss or Southern Mississippi. And like many African Americans, I had to go north, in my case Indiana University, for graduate work.

I am often astonished at those who think segregation was just an inconvenience or another way of seeing the world. It was legalized oppression, actually state-supported violence. And there was violence, false imprisonment, disappearances, and vigilante lynchings. It was legalized violence against a minority that had been brought to this country against its will, suffered in oppression for hundreds of years, was finally set free, and still, after all that, found itself without adequate legal or community protection in many parts of our nation. Later, immigrants came to this nation with a promise of the American dream. Yet those of us who were already here were denied those same opportunities. Judge Leon Higginbotham once called slavery the "persistent failure of perception." Well, segregation was a continued persistence of a failure to perceive the obvious: that there was no real difference except skin color. There was no rational justification for segregation. The real reasons were grotesque and abhorrent: ignorance, fear, hatred, selfishness, history, division, pride, and inhumanity.

The law was no help; it actually codified this hatred. In 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court found that segregation could be justified because of, in the exact words of the decision, "established usages, customs, and traditions of the people, with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order." In short, precedent in custom and law was more important than higher constitutional promises and human acts of decency.

But 50 years ago, the Supreme Court, in overturning that odious decision, sent seismic shock waves through this country. In his oral arguments before the court in Brown v. Board of Education, Thurgood Marshall said, anyway you look at the problem, you "can't take race out of this case."

He was right. This wasn't about custom, states' rights, precedent, legislative intent, or the other ways of cloaking the debate. Segregation was about genetics and skin color. Period. And the members of the court saw that. If you look at each mention of the racial question in the decision, you see the court squarely focused on denying the relevance of race as a barrier to education. But the court did see racial barriers as harmful and pernicious, and said so with the explicit documentation of Kenneth Clark and a host of sociologists and psychologists in the famous, long, well-substantiated, and much-discussed "footnote 11."

In ending segregation, the doctrine of "separate but equal" was exposed as unconstitutional. Perhaps worse, it was exposed as a lie, a stain on our culture, and a shameful chapter in our history.

Of course, segregation didn't disappear right away. The pace of change has been slow, and remains slow, measured in decades and generations. Many studies have shown that Brown didn't trickle down into some states for more than 20 years, some even later. In other words, well into the 1970s, there were still some states that practiced a form of legally reasoned segregation, in defiance of the Brown decision.

But the unwillingness of courts to enforce the decision was only one manifestation of the unwillingness to change. Georgetown University Law Center's Professor Mark Tushnet has documented "the massive resistance" to Brown, where countless politicians, governors, state legislatures, citizens, schools, and social institutions passionately worked to undermine the decision. Court cases were filed and then refiled again and again to delay implementation of the decision or to obfuscate the result. There was widespread violence. The sheer magnitude and force of the resistance have no domestic equivalent today, but in the Carolinas, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and elsewhere it was a second civil war. In Virginia, one school system, Prince Edward County, shut down for five years rather than accept segregation. In some states, governors and other elected officials and the police actually led the resistance. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was right when he spoke of their lips dripping with words like "interposition and nullification." They were proud to resist Brown. They looked for any means to continue segregation. And as long as segregation persisted, we were, in Dr. King's words, "exiles in our own land."

Our country survived this massive resistance because of the strength of the Constitution and the steadfast courage of many Americans, including many individuals who risked everything for change, people like Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, the Freedom Riders, the marchers in Birmingham and Montgomery, Ralph Abernathy, and Dr. King. The martyrdom of Evers and King underlines the many sacrifices made by people of conscience to fully share the American promise.

Because of the Brown decision, we are a stronger, more equitable, more just nation. But we still have a long way to go. And education is still the best place to continue pushing for changes that will make our society as equitable and as just as our country deserves.

Equality of opportunity is more than just a statement of law; it must be a matter of fact. And factually speaking, millions of children in this country do not yet have equal opportunity. There has been much discussion recently of internal segregation in our schools and a process of re-segregation between schools, including in studies from Harvard's Civil Rights Project. There are scholars like Steven and Abigail Thernstrom who have documented a frightening and steadfast educational divide throughout the country. Brown only opened the schoolhouse doors. After 50 years, we still have a lot of work to do.

The No Child Left Behind law has some important contemporary parallels to the Brown case. President Bush and a bipartisan majority in Congress recognized a well-documented, if silent, problem, and a two-tiered education system. Some fortunate students receive a world-class education. There are islands of excellence. Sometimes these islands are private schools, with high tuition and great reputations. Sometimes they are public schools, many in urban areas. At these schools, there are many fine teachers and administrators.

But there are also millions of students mired in mediocrity, denied a quality education. For various reasons, they have been passed on and passed out. Students in poorly performing schools may have had good teachers, excellent administrators, or even plentiful resources—or not. Many students do not read at their grade level; some are years behind; some cannot read at all. There are similar problems in mathematics. For example, by the time they reach 12th grade, only one in six blacks and one in five Hispanics can read at grade level. Math scores are even worse: only 3 percent of blacks and 4 percent of Hispanics are testing at the proficient level. There is another bit of data that you should know. Two years ago, SAT scores improved for American children on average; but if you dig beneath the surface, you find that scores remained flat for African Americans, and Hispanic American students' scores actually went down over previous years. And every indication from every measurement told us that we were confronting a deeply divided, disparate education system.

I believe we were witnessing an emerging de facto educational apartheid. This is no exaggeration of the facts. Millions of children are left behind. Millions! And we know these students: African Americans, Hispanics, low-income, special-needs, and English-learning. And this in the 21st century, not the 1950s.

In my view, such division was wrong in 1954, and it is wrong today. It is immoral. It is unjust. Education is about knowledge and about finding oneself. The twin disaster is to be given no intellectual tools and to be set adrift, with no means to find your way back. This educational divide is cruel, vicious, demeaning, disrespectful, and degrading. I believe that when a child is left behind by an education system that is an injustice that affects us all. It is intolerable!

I give President Bush much credit for seeing this problem and willingly making it an issue in the last national election. He said that, if elected, he would institute change, and he did. Within four days of assuming office, he initiated a blueprint that became the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. This was an act that was passed with wide bipartisan support. The president immediately signed it, and it became the law of the land.

With this law—this tool—we are beginning to redress the achievement gap. This law is radical surgery, massive reform. The "old ways" will no longer be tolerated. We demand equity, justice, and inclusion.

No Child Left Behind is a powerful, sweeping law. It is the logical step after Brown v. Board of Education, which ended segregation, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which promised an equitable society. The ancient Greeks used to say, "Education is freedom." Yes, it is. And No Child Left Behind is about freedom and equality and justice. It is about the way we learn about life; it is about life itself.

Because of the powerful sweep of this change, this revolution, there are some who resist. That is to be expected. The resistance to Brown was massive and sustained over generations. Those who fought against Brown were on the wrong side of history, just as those who fight No Child Left Behind will one day also be so labeled. We have come to expect strident resistance to any major changes in education, particularly changes to the status quo that challenge the education establishment that seeks to protect itself.

The opposition has been fierce and multifaceted. Some people will simply stop at nothing to undermine this law, looking for any excuse, any flaw, any link, however weak, and any diversion to try to stop this law. I understand this new wave of massive resistance. Its goal is to fracture the alliance for change, to splinter unity, to chip away at our resolve, and to cause our commitment to crumble. Those who resist hope to destroy our will, making further progress as difficult as possible. And they will object loudly, vehemently, and right or wrong, to win, to keep our schools from becoming successful for all students, to keep the schools from true inclusivity.

Some argue about so-called "unfunded mandates," even though the president has committed historic levels of federal funding to elementary and secondary education. Several studies, including one published in Education Next, of which Professor Peterson serves as editor-in-chief, show that the law is adequately funded. There is nothing unfunded about a proposed $57 billion in discretionary federal funding for education in 2005, a 36 percent increase since the president took office. We are also set to provide another $57 billion in mandatory federal funding for student loans. This represents about $114 billion in total federal investment in education for fiscal year 2005.

We already see considerable evidence that the law is working. In the most recent results on the Nation's Report Card, or NAEP, the mathematics scores for fourth- and eighth-graders significantly jumped between 2000 and 2003. Importantly, African American, Hispanic American, and low-income students accounted for some of the most significant improvements. As a result, the achievement gap between white and black students is closing for both fourth- and eighth-graders. Further evidence comes from a recent report by the Council of the Great City Schools, which reviewed test scores from 61 urban school districts in 37 states. Students in the largest urban public school systems showed improvement in reading and math in the first year under No Child Left Behind.

We need to build on this progress. There are profound and lasting consequences. If we fail to fully implement this law, millions of children will be harmed by being excluded, ignored, disrespected, and undereducated, and then sent out into a world for which they are educationally unprepared and uncompetitive. Who among us would wish that on any child? On your own child? We have to seize a future that ends racism and division in our schools. We must have a vision that pictures our schools as successful, inclusive, fair, and equitable. We must work for harmony, common ground, and bipartisan support for meaningful, lasting reform.

Two score and 10 years have passed since Brown. It may take generations to finally achieve equality of opportunity. But a race-free society must start with fair and inclusive education. That is where we must build the foundation of fairness, hope, and decency. We must make our schools equitable in order to make our society and culture equitable. Our work for the future begins now, and it begins in our educational institutions.

In his speech on the National Mall, Dr. King spoke of the future. He said African Americans and those fighting for equality must never be satisfied and will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

We must never give up. I believe that we will never give up or give in. The struggle for equality is a struggle to preserve, protect, and defend our Constitution and to participate in the American Dream. We have much work to do. There are still many difficult trials ahead. There will be strident opposition. But with No Child Left Behind I believe the president and the Congress have taken this country one step closer to a race-free society. And, with each step, we get closer to fulfilling the promise of Brown v. Board of Education.

Thank you.

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