According to Turkey RPCV Elaine Jones, the civil rights war still rages on two battlefields - prisons and schools
Speaker: Schools, prisons civil rights battleground
By Rachel C. Stanley / Lynchburg News & Advance
February 17, 2004
SWEET BRIAR - According to Elaine Jones, the civil rights war still rages on two battlefields - prisons and schools.
Jones, the director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, was invited to speak about current civil rights issues Monday evening at Sweet Briar College.
She was the first black woman to graduate from the University of Virginia School of Law, and has devoted her career to fighting on behalf of civil rights and social justice.
Jones told the crowd of about 75 students, faculty and community members that problems in the prison system and the public school system are two major issues facing Americans today.
And with her booming voice, Jones implored the crowd to get involved.
“We could change this prison industrial complex because it’s nothing we inherited,” she said. “Now, we incarcerate more people than any industrialized nation in the world … 2 million people, it’s out of control.”
Jones said there are broad problems within the criminal justice system, citing the well-known example of 46 people arrested in Tulia, Texas, in 1999 on drug charges, 40 of whom were black and all of whom were later released.
“It makes no sense,” said Jones, who referred to the federal government’s “War on Drugs” as a “War on People of Color.”
“It shouldn’t be that our tax dollars work to cause this kind of travesty,” she said. “We have created that system and it’s wrong.”
And those issues, Jones said, cannot be separated from the problems in the public education system.
“Prisons and our educational system - they are tied together,” she said.
“The money (for prisons) is coming from the higher education budget.”
Jones said that 50 years after the Supreme Court forced the integration of public schools, not enough has been done to improve the school system.
“We don’t have another 50 years to waste the way we wasted the last 50,” she said.
“We have to educate these kids.”
Jones also told the crowd a little about her background. After growing up in Norfolk, she attended Howard University and then joined the Peace Corps in Turkey.
In 1993, she became the first woman to lead the Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit law firm.
“Nothing is tougher than these human justice, civil rights issues,” Jones said.
She also reminded students that they do not need to look as far as Tulia to find civil rights battles.
“We don’t have to look to Texas, we can look right here … we do have a problem at home,” she said.
“There is more to do in Virginia.”
After Jones spoke, several Sweet Briar College students described her as interesting and energetic.
Kelli Bergmann, a senior, said she came because she was interested in education issues, and found her interest piqued by the issues in the justice system.
“I wanted to hear what she had to say about education, because it’s a topic I’m interested in,” Bergmann said.
“But I was encouraged to find out more about the war on drugs.”
• Contact Rachel C. Stanley at rstanley@newsadvance.com or (434) 385-5536.
