NAACP President & CEO to Deliver the Commencement Address at Payne Theological Seminary

On Friday, May 22nd, Cornell William Brooks, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), will deliver the Commencement address at Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio. Brooks will also receive an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.Only a year into his appointment as the 18th President and CEO of the NAACP, Mr. Brooks successfully led a 134 mile multi-generational, multiracial and multi-faith march, titled Journey for Justice, from Michael Brown’s home in Ferguson to the Governor’s Mansion in Jefferson City in pursuit of criminal justice reform.  The march led to a meeting with the Governor of Missouri and continued discussions on policy reform as it relates to racial profiling and policing in the state of Missouri. Under Mr. Brooks’ Administration, Congress also passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act, which will require states to report to the U.S. Department of Justice information on every instance in which a person dies while in the custody of a law enforcement official.

Prior to leading the NAACP, President Brooks led the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice where he directed the Institute’s successful efforts to win the passage of three landmark prisoner reentry bills in 2010, hailed by The New York Times as, “a model for the rest of the nation.” He has also served as Executive Director of the Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington, Vice-Chair of the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority, Second Vice-Chair of the East Orange General Hospital Board of Trustees.

A longtime lawyer and civil rights activist, Mr. Brooks holds a JD from Yale University, a Master of Divinity degree from the Boston University School of Theology where he focused in social ethics and systematic theology and a BA in political science, with honors, from Jackson State University.

WHEN:
Friday, May 22, 2015 at 7:00 p.m. EST

WHERE:
Wilberforce University Alumni Multiplex
1055 North Bickett Road
Wilberforce, OH 45384