Statewide Clergy Issue Luncheon at Fountain Baptist Church, Summit, NJ

Statewide Clergy Luncheon, May 16 at Fountain Baptist Church, Summit

On the eve of the 70th Anniversary of the Brown v Board Decision.

May 16, 2024, 12 Noon to 2:00 PM.

 70 years ago, the Brown decision outlawed segregated schools and invalidated the Plessey decision, 58 years earlier, that cynically decreed that compulsorily or coerced racial separation could ever be made equal.

The tolerance, sanction, and support of the lethal levels of racial and economic apartheid across New Jersey in schools, neighborhoods, and criminal justice makes a mockery of the legal and political conflagration that became the civil rights revolution lit by Thurgood Marshal’s historic victory, Rosa Park’s daring action, and the martyrdom of Emmitt Till.

Fountain Baptist Church, Building One America, NJ Coalition Against Racial Exclusion (NJCARE) and the national Summit for Civil Rights will host a Clergy Luncheon on Thursday, May 16 to discuss the pressing priorities and challenges facing our congregations and communities today related to housing, schools, health, economic opporunty and the law.

As we look across New Jersey’s deeply unequal, fragmented, and segregated landscape, we see too many of our values being violated because of the greed, ineptness, or passivity of our leaders.

The faith community - and especially the Black Church and the Black Clergy - have an important and vital role to play to

fill this moral vacuum during this time of massively failed leadership in our secular institutions and among public officials.