Charles J. Ogletree Jr. named as keynote speaker for Syracuse University’s 2006 Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration

Charles J. Ogletree Jr. named as keynote speaker for Syracuse University’s 2006 Martin Luther King Jr. CelebrationDecember 01, 2005Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

Charles J. Ogletree Jr., Harvard Law School’s Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and executive director of the school’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, will be the keynote speaker for Syracuse University’s 21st annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration, “All Deliberate Speed: The Dream Deferred?”, in the Carrier Dome on Sunday, Jan. 22, 2006.

The annual celebration is among the largest university-sponsored events in the United States to commemorate King. Last year, more than 2,000 people attended SU’s event.

The evening program, which will include the presentation of the 2006 Unsung Hero Awards and entertainment, begins at 6:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Tickets for the dinner, which precedes the program at 5:30 p.m., are $20 for the general public and $13 for students without meal plans. Students with meal plans will be charged for one dinner. Tickets, which generally sell out soon after they go on sale, will be available Dec. 1. For ticket information, call Hendricks Chapel at (315) 443-5044.

Ogletree will also appear earlier in the day at a community celebration at noon at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, 416 East Raynor Ave., sponsored by the Syracuse Inner City Rotary.

He will also present at a 3 p.m. seminar in SU’s Maxwell Auditorium, which will center around his historical memoir, “All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education” (Norton, 2004). Both the community event and seminar are free and open to the public.

Ogletree’s book, “All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education,” exposes why Brown v. Board of Education, the single most important decision on race in the 20th century, should be carefully analyzed. Ogletree contends that while the decision was important and historic, it was steadily opposed and diluted by the government, political officials and individuals from all walks of life. The book will be available for purchase following the seminar.

A prominent legal theorist, Ogletree has earned an international reputation by taking a hard look at complex issues of law and by working to secure the rights guaranteed by the Constitution for everyone equally under the law. He is the founding and executive director of Harvard Law School’s new Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, named in honor of the lawyer who spearheaded the litigation in Brown v. Board of Education. The Institute focuses on a variety of issues relating to race and justice, and sponsors research, holds conferences and provides policy analysis.

Ogletree’s most recent book, co-authored with Professor Deborah Rhode of Stanford University, “Brown at 50: The Unfinished Legacy,” commemorates the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education and was published by the American Bar Association in August 2004.

Ogletree holds honorary doctorates of law from North Carolina Central University, New England School of Law, Tougaloo College, Amherst College, Wilberforce University, and the University of Miami School of Law.

In 2003, he was selected by Savoy Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential Blacks in America and by Black Enterprise Magazine, along with Thurgood Marshall, A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., and Constance Baker Motley, as one of the legal legends among America’s top black lawyers. In 2002, he received the National Bar Association’s prestigious Equal Justice Award. In 2001, he joined alist of distinguished jurists, including former Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan, and civil rights lawyers Elaine Jones and Oliver Hill, when he received the prestigious Charles Hamilton Houston Medallion of Merit from the Washington Bar Association. He also held the Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics at the University of Oregon Law School and was a Scholar in Residence at Stanford University. In 2000, Professor Ogletree was selected by the National Law Journal as one of the “100 Most Influential Lawyers in America.”