Narrative about Brown vs. Board of Education :: Rhetoric

Narrative In my Rhetoric 105 class that I am required to take a freshman at the University, we spent the entire semester relating our class work to the ruling of Brown vs. Board. Our main focus was on an author by the name of James Baldwin, a prominent black writer during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. As a requirement for the course we had to attend a campus event related to Brown vs. Board. There were many events all over campus as a result of the campus celebration of the 50th anniversary of the ruling. My choice was to attend a speech given by a man named Julian Bond entitled â€Å"The Broken Promise of Brown.† Having never heard of this man, I took the recommendation of my teacher and attended with my notebook in hand. As I walked to Smith Memorial Hall located on the southeast corner of the Quad, I had no idea what to expect. My initial thoughts saw me as being the only white person in attendance and being surrounded by mostly black people. As I entered the doors of the building I he ard a lot of talking and socializing coming from upstairs. At the bottom of the stairs was a sign indicating that there was a â€Å"by invitation only† reception upstairs. On my way into the auditorium I learned that Mr. Bond was not just a randomly chosen speaker but was instead the chairman of the National Association for Advancement of Colored People. Since the auditorium was hardly filled and still believing that there was going to be a dominantly African-American crowd I came to the conclusion that the people upstairs must all be of African descent. After all, the major supporters of the NAACP are not white people. Inside the auditorium were mostly white people. Many of them were older and accompanied by what appeared to be a significant other. About 10 minutes prior to the beginning of the speech, the people from upstairs began to stream into the auditorium and much to my surprise the crowd coming in was dominantly white. Almost everyone came in with another person. Som e came in groups, some with a significant other and others with just a single friend. After the auditorium was filled, by my estimation it was 65-75% white. This was the opposite of what my initial thoughts were. In my opinion, I thought the speech would relate more to the black population and thus the crowd balance would reflect that.