'Tools of law and education': NCCU dean delivers annual Stone Memorial Lecture

The 32nd annual Stone Memorial Lecture was held on Tuesday night at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center Auditorium. UNC alumna and dean of North Carolina Central University’s School of Law, Patricia Timmons-Goodson, was the keynote speaker at the event. 

Each fall, the Sonja Hanes Stone Center for Black Culture and History hosts the lecture in honor of Sonja Haynes Stone, a former UNC faculty member and civil rights activist who died in 1991. 

Stone Center Director Rhon Manigault-Bryant said the event is an opportunity for the Stone Center to showcase the wonderful work Black women are doing in the legacy of Stone.

Timmons-Goodson, the first African-American woman to serve on the North Carolina Supreme Court, titled her lecture “Law, Education, and the Arc of the Moral Universe.” 

“I'm here today to tell you that my more than four decades of service in the law gives me optimism in the future of civil rights in this country and of our democracy,” she said. 

Timmons-Goodson spoke about several social justice topics such as voting rights, excessive use of force by law enforcement and issues inside higher education as potential reasons one could lose hope. 

To remind the audience that “defeat is not an option,” the lecture then turned to history to testify about progress made in the country. 

“African Americans at the time of my birth lived a life with the daily realities of injustice,” Timmons-Goodson said. “Voting, that fundamental act of democracy, was still pretty much reserved for whites.”

Timmons-Goodson said the decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, which established the “separate but equal” doctrine, took two steps backward, but Brown v. Board of Education, which established segregated schools as unconstitutional, was a step in the right direction. 

“Our progress has been slow, and it did not flow in a straight line, and yet it flowed; it did,” she said. 

Relating the lecture to current events, audience member and Timmons-Goodson's son Aaron Goodson said understanding history and context helps him appreciate what's happening today. 

In response to an audience member's question following the lecture, Timmons-Goodson reemphasized a historical understanding as necessary to fully appreciate a step forward. 

“You celebrate it so that you have something to sustain you when perhaps you step backwards,” she said. 

Timmons-Goodson said that when aligned, education and law have the power to “walk the moral universe towards justice.”

Manigault-Bryant said the Stone Center wanted someone with a connection to UNC to speak at the event and said it was an honor to have Timmons-Goodson, who she said is accomplished and humble.

Approaching the end of her lecture, Timmons-Goodson used Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of courage and action, saying courage is key. 

“A storm is rocking the house of our democracy,” she said. “There is no denying, regardless of who you supported at the recent election, one cannot dispute that our country is divided in a way that we've not witnessed since perhaps the Civil War.” 

Circling back to her optimism for the future, Timmons-Goodson closed the lecture by challenging the audience with a call to action.

“Let's bring these tools of law and education to bear on the arc of the moral universe so that it bends faster, better and more firmly toward justice,” she said.

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