Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Yale Law '90: Cornell William Brooks
Cornell Brooks was someone I learned from when we were in law school. He had something that held me in awe-- he had already earned a divinity degree from Boston University (after undergrad at Jackson State), and that combination of knowing law and faith was something I really admired and probably envied. While at BU, he won awards both for scholarship and preaching. While he was doing that, I was tracking people down on the streets of Detroit as a process server. It was a little intimidating.
After law school, Cornell accomplished great things-- and I mean, very literally, great things.
He worked for the DOJ on housing discrimination, he was a civil rights attorney for a non-profit, ran for Congress, and he ran the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. Then, in 2014, he was elected the Chief Executive of the NAACP. It is a challenging job, especially at a time of continuing racial conflicts in the wake of the tragic episodes in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere involving police shootings. He led the Journey for Justice in the summer of 2015, traveling over 1,000 miles from Selma, Alabama to Washington DC. I remember being tempted to join. I'm sorry that I didn't.
In that role, Cornell got to speak out on a number of issues at the center of our national conversations. Here he is talking about the racist church murders (they were not just "shootings"- they were murders) in Charleston:
Since stepping down from the NAACP, Cornell has been teaching and preaching, and is a regular contributor at CNN. Primarily, he teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School school of government. His title there is "Professor of the Practice of Social Justice and Leadership," which seems to fit. In January, I spoke to his class on "Morals, Money, and Movements: Criminal Justice Reform as Case Study." It was quite a day: I loved sharing the room with him, in front of 80-some students from all parts of Harvard's graduate and undergraduate programs.
One thing I saw in the students there was the way they looked at him with a combination of admiration and engagement. It was a familiar look, even some 30 years later.
