Fifty-one years ago, the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision brought both promise and a host of unpredicted particulars to a generation of African-American school-age youngsters who watched it all play out from behind their desks.

What did the Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation in public schools mean to them? And what might it mean for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the 21 st century?

West Virginia Universitys College of Human Resources and Education takes up both questions this week as part of WVU s ongoing commemoration of the Brown v. Board anniversary.

The college is hosting gatherings Thursday and Friday (March 10-11) that balance remembrances by the people who were there with scholarly looks ahead at Browns battle for equality that has been officially waged since 1954.

Black Hands in the Biscuits, Not the Classrooms: Unveiling Hope and Struggle for Browns Promisewill be discussed at 6 p.m. Thursday at Erickson Alumni Center on the Evansdale campus by Dr. Sherick Hughes, an educator and social historian at the University of Toledo.

At 11 a.m. Friday, Erickson will be the site of a panel discussion moderated by Hughes featuring the testimonials and stories of people across the region who personally felt the effects of segregation and integration at the time Brown became law.

Such stories, what Hughes callsnarratives of struggle and hope,are to be celebrated, he said.Such stories not only show where weve been as a society: they also put down pathways of what could come to be in the future,he said.

We continue to learn from them,Hughes noted.Narratives of struggle speak to the task of engaging individual democratic rights in a wake of unfulfilled national democratic ideals.

Both events are being coordinated by Dr. Elizabeth Dooley, an associate professor in WVU s College of Human Resources and Education.