On Monday, we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in “Brown vs. Board of Education.” While there is much to celebrate, we must realize that some of the same challenges that we faced on Monday, May 17, 1954 will still be present on Monday, May 17, 2004 – and beyond.

While listening to all the celebratory speeches, panel discussions, radio programs as well as watching television programs and reading special sections of newspapers, magazines and the Internet, we should be cognizant that we can’t afford to celebrate the past while ignoring the present.

A report by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University titled, “Brown at 50: King’s Dream or Plessy’s Nighmare?” [www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu], states, “U.S. schools are becoming more segregated in all regions for both African-American and Latino students. We are celebrating a victory over segregation at a time when our schools across the nation are becoming increasingly segregated.”

One reason we’ve lost so much ground is that many public officials who will be honoring the Brown decision on Monday have been dishonoring the spirit of Brown by opposing the underlying premises that supported the decision. Mark my word: George W. Bush will have the temerity to utter some “compassionate” sentiments about Brown on Monday. Yet, this is the same president that came out last year on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday to denounce two affirmative action programs at the University of Michigan that were eventually upheld by a conservative Supreme Court.

The University of Michigan Law School program was upheld by a vote of 5-4, with Justices Clarence Thomas, the second Black to ever sit on the court, and Justice Antonio Scalia among the dissenters. Bush has said that if he gets the opportunity, he will appoint Supreme Court justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. Having barely squeaked by recently with a string of 5-4 decisions supporting civil rights, if Bush gets re-elected in November and appoints one or possibly two Supreme Court justices, as expected, it’s unlikely that a Brown-like case would be upheld by a reconfigured Supreme Court.

Writing in the National Urban League’s “Opportunity Journal,” Gary Orfield of Harvard observed: “We are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in the midst of a profoundly conservative administration, and as schools have become more segregated in almost all of our states.

“We are celebrating as Chief Justice Rehnquist – who opposed Brown while a Supreme Court clerk, and who has consistently fought to limit and reverse school desegregation –presides over the court in his 18th year. And we celebrate as Thurgood Marshall’s chair is occupied by an African-American justice who has voted with Rehnquist for decisions allowing for the resegregation of schools, in one case disputing basic premises of Brown v. Board of Education.”

While looking back at Brown, we can’t close our eyes to what’s happening today.

What we have today is an administration that is hostile to civil rights, one that is packing the federal court with Right-wing ideologues and one whose primary enforcement of the nations’ civil rights laws are largely left to an attorney general who actively opposed federal court orders in his native Missouri that would have helped desegregate St. Louis and Kansas City public schools. Moreover, we have a president who calls himself a “compassionate conservative” while being, as one member of the Congressional Black Caucus noted, compassionate toward conservatives. And we should remember that on Monday when George W. Bush pretends to have compassion for African-American causes.

Blacks will be celebrating Brown because it formally ended – at least, on paper – America’s version of apartheid. The Brown decision had a greater impact outside of education than it had on public schools; a decade after the decision, 98 percent of all African-Americans in the South still attended all-Black schools. Brown provided the legal foundation for removing barriers in public accommodations, employment, housing, voting and other areas. For that, we have much to celebrate.

In the hoopla that’s surrounding Brown, we should be mindful that the Brown decision came about only because brave citizens and lawyers had the courage to challenge injustice. School systems were forced to end segregation. The most honorable way to celebrate Brown on Monday will be by rededicating our lives to challenging the segregation and injustice that remains so prevalent in society. If we don’t act now, people looking back on this period 50 years from now, will have nothing to celebrate.