UTM kicked off Black History Month on Wednesday, Feb. 5 with a speech from Rasheed Ali Cromwell, JD.
Cromwell’s speech, “Protest for Peace: Social Justice and Change,” focused on the ways college students can create and inspire change through peaceful protest.
Cromwell is the founder and president of the Harbor Institute, an educational consulting firm focused on motivating others through personal connections.
According to the NSLDS.org, “As a fourth generation Historically Black College and University (HBCU) graduate, Rasheed brings an appreciation, sensitivity and insight into what it means to be a college student.”
“He utilizes his legal, academic and entrepreneurial expertise to focus on the following topics: cultural competency, empowerment, student success, hazing prevention, intervention and leadership development.”
Cromwell divided the audience into two groups, and had attendees perform several exercises relating to social justice.
The audience was first asked to define the terms social justice and civil rights and elected representatives to tell Cromwell their own definitions.
The group definitions sparked conversation that led into Cromwell’s discussion on the history of the civil rights movement.
Cromwell finished by showing a video highlighting the protest started by football players at the University of Missouri following racist events on campus to show the audience just exactly how college students can make a change.
“You have these two entities, social justice, and the entire civil rights. When people feel like groups that are marginalized, whether it’s how they identify based off of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and they feel like they are discriminated against, often times you see this protest, and we’re talking about peaceful protest tonight.”
Cromwell showed a recreation of a famous sit-in and had the audience share reactions with one another.
The event was highly oriented on activities and exercises to help the audience understand the meaning of social justice.
When asked how social justice has changed over his lifetime, Cromwell responded, “It has been impacted by social media, just like everything else…”
Cromwell advised that any student who wants to be a part of social change should become involved with organizations around campus.
“You all have a lot of active student organizations…I would just encourage those students to go to meetings, go to programs, see what they like, if they connect with those groups and then get actively involved and match it to something they like to do.”
Cromwell gave the example of someone who already has a strong social media presence managing the pages of the organizations they were involved with.
“Information has become more accessible, where people have access to more information at a seconds notice, and that has made a change for the better, but it has also negatively affected us because we don’t do as much research as we should about issues.”
This isn’t the first time Cromwell has spoken at UTM. Last time he was performing a cultural competency session discussing race, gender, nationality, ethnicity and race as a social construct.
Cromwell addressed the issue of voter turnout, specifically among college students, as being necessary to defending your civil rights.
“What about the student government election, did you vote for that? Because those are people that have access and are in control of resources here as a student. This is what we mean by advocacy.”
In closing, the audience was asked to complete a survey and share their best photos of the event with Cromwell. Cromwell gave a $25 gift card to an audience member who submitted the best photograph.
There are numerous events on campus celebrating Black History Month this month, for a detailed list visit https://utm.campuslabs.com/engage/events.
The event was sponsored by the Office of Student Life and Multicultural Affairs.
For more information regarding the 20th annual Civil Rights Conference refer to the cover of this publication or contact civilrights@utm.edu.
