By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Sunday, October 20, 1991
The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03
After professor Rosalind Jeffries concluded a speech urging blacks to take pride in their heritage, a waiter went over and thanked her for inspiring him and exhorted her to press on with her work.
The 45-minute speech struck the same chord with many of the 350 people at Saturday’s NAACP annual Freedom Fund Awards Luncheon who gave her several standing ovations and flocked to the podium to speak with her.
Jeffries, the wife of controversial college professor Leonard Jeffries Jr., is an art historian and curator, and is a professor at New Jersey State Teachers College. She talked about the contributions of Africans and African-Americans to history, religion, science, and the arts.
But people of all races contributed to civilization, Rosalind Jeffries said. So blacks have to bring forth research that acknowledges contributions of Africans that have long been ignored.
“She didn’t make a speech, she made a statement,” said George J. Powell, president of the Bergen County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“She made a statement about life, a statement that when we say we are pro-black it doesn’t mean we are `anti anyone. See, there’s a lot of myth out there about blacks not being bright.”
Speaking with a flourish, and injecting humor and sarcasm, Rosalind Jeffries challenged those myths.
And, without naming names, she touched on a subject that black communities around the country have been embroiled in the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill confrontation before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
She decried the spectacle of two successful, educated blacks being part of such a lurid display before the nation.
“I hate to see a woman destroy a man in public because she was wounded,” she said. “Even when you are wounded and hurt there’s a time when you must sacrifice. I don’t condone sexual harassment and I am for women’s rights. But I think you must use wisdom in living, along with the knowledge that you acquire.”
Youth Achievement Awards were presented to Wendi Celeste Dunlap, a Hackensack High School sophomore; Richard Howard Jones, a Teaneck High School honors student; Kaileen T. Alston, a senior at Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood; and Natalie Louise Jenkins, a graduate of Demarest’s Academy of Holy Angels and a freshman at Spelman College. Also honored were: Lou Schwartz, Anne Strokes Joyner, Jacqueline Caraway-Flowers, and Curtis and Michelle March, all of Teaneck.
Keywords: SPEECH; BLACK; RIGHT; ART; HISTORY; TEACHER; AFRICA; RELIGION; SCIENCE; TEANECK; EAST RUTHERFORD; ORGANIZATION
ID: 17358599 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)