Women's and Gender Studies Program

Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun inspires Brandeis crowd to believe in the "power of one"

By Marsha MacEachern
photo by Mike Lovett

Click here to view the video of Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun's lecture.

Moseley Braun was the guest speaker at the Women's and Gender Studies Program’s Fourth Annual Eleanor Roosevelt Lecture Wednesday

Whenever someone argues that one person is unable to make a difference, former U.S. Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun will not accept it.

Moseley Braun, the guest speaker at the Women’s and Gender Studies Program’s Fourth Annual Eleanor Roosevelt Lecture Wednesday, charged a crowd of more than 100 Brandeis students, faculty and staff to “be the anonymous person who sets the tone of conversation.”

In her lecture, “Colored Water and The Power of One,” Moseley Braun chronicled changes in the United States social order that have occurred during the last generation, focusing on the role of the individual to affect such change. She reflected on one instance when she was about nine years old, and her mother wouldn’t allow her and her younger brother to drink from a segregated “colored” water fountain. She obeyed, but her brother shouted in a tantrum, “I want some colored water!” He believed that multicolored water would come through the spout.

Moseley Braun said that while we’re now able to laugh at the innocent thoughts of her young brother, this is one example of how far the country has come within her lifetime. “Racial segregation seems ridiculous and radical,” she said. “But not long ago this painful reality defined the life of millions of people, black and white.”

Change, she said, came about with the actions and support of everyday people. “What you say or don’t say and who you say it to… all of these contribute to the atmosphere so that other choices can be made.”

Moseley Braun was a living example of “change” in 1993, as she became the first African-American woman elected to the Senate, and served the state of Illinois in that role for six years. She has also worked as a county executive officer, an Illinois state representative, an assistant United States attorney and as the United States ambassador to New Zealand. In 2004, she was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. She is the founder and CEO of Good Food Organics, and currently maintains a business law practice and consultancy in Chicago.

While Moseley Braun cited the “rich progress” this country has made, she said we are still in a period of transition with a new set of societal expectations and structures that will also move in the direction of public opinion.

“Every person matters and it only takes one person to spark change,” she said. Moseley Braun would like to see people “take the blinders off” and engage in the world we live in rather than a “make believe” world found in TV and video games. “Make caring fashionable,” she said. “Your decisions drive outcomes.”

Moseley Braun’s lecture was co-sponsored by the African and Afro-American Studies Department, the American History Graduate Program, the American Studies Department, the Brandeis Black Student Organization, the History Department, the Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences and the Politics Department.