The UALR Institute on Race and Ethnicity honors the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King and celebrates his birthday on January 15, by recommitting to work for racial and ethnic justice in Arkansas. The Institute has faith in the people of Arkansas; that we will end the injustices born of slavery, Jim Crow, the Trail of Tears, the internment of Japanese Americans, discrimination against Latino immigrants and their legacy, and structural racism that are evidenced in the continuing disparities in, for example, health, education and the criminal justice system.
We embrace the challenge of the words of Dr. King, “ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus,” by being a leader in the formulation of policies that eradicate disparities caused by structural racism. Indeed, “we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this [state].”
