Cornell William Brooks, president and CEO of the NAACP, will be Jackson State University’s 2015 Spring Commencement speaker on Saturday, May 2.
Ceremonies begin at 8 a.m. at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium in Jackson, according to Dr. Sheila Porterfield, associate dean, JSU College of Business.
Brooks, 54, a lawyer and activist, was named head of the nation’s oldest, largest and most widely respected grassroots-based civil rights organization last May.
He is a graduate of JSU with a bachelor’s in Political Science, and has earned a Master of Divinity at Boston University and a law degree from Yale University.
As NAACP CEO, Brooks says he is working with the leadership and membership “to build an NAACP that is multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-generational, and one million members strong.”
Born in El Paso, Texas, and reared in Georgetown, S.C., Brooks credits the Head Start program for his early education. He has called himself “a grandson, heir and a beneficiary” of the landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education argued by legendary NAACP litigator Thurgood Marshall.
Prior to joining the NAACP, Brooks led the Newark-based New Jersey Institute for Social Justice as president and CEO. Brooks previously was senior counsel with the Federal Communications Commission, promoting small business and media ownership diversity.
He has served as a U.S. Department of Justice trial attorney representing victims of housing discrimination. His civil rights experience includes serving as executive director of the Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington, D.C., and as trial attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
At Yale Law School, he served as a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and member of the Yale Law and Policy Review. He served a judicial clerkship with then-Chief Judge Sam J. Ervin, III, on the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
While studying at Boston University as a Martin Luther King Scholar, Brooks was awarded both the Oxnam-Leibman Fellowship for outstanding scholarship and promoting racial harmony, and the Jefferson Fellowship for outstanding scholarship and excellence in preaching.
Brooks lives in Woodbridge, Va., with his wife Janice Broome Brooks and their sons Cornell II and Hamilton. They are members of Turner Memorial A.M.E. Church in Hyattsville, Md.
For more information, contact Porterfield at 601-979-2263.