The Current: (Univ. of Mo-St. Louis)

By Paul Hackbarth

Media Credit: Danny Reise Mike Jones, senior policy adviser to St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley, talks about the black student movement at UM-St. Louis in the late 1960s. Jones was one of the first members of Associated Black Collegians, which formed on campus in 1968.

“When you talk to guys my age, all of them black, some of them white, we all say the same thing: We never thought we’d live to see [Barack] Obama. I never thought I would be alive to say a black guy had a legitimate chance to be president of the United States.”
Those thoughts summed up the past 40 years for Mike Jones, senior policy adviser for St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley and UM-St. Louis alumnus.

“If you would’ve asked me in 1968, would you see a black CEO of a Fortune 50 corporation like Merrill Lynch…I’d say, ‘not possible,'” Jones said. “If you would’ve asked me…if we’d have a black man as secretary of state and black woman as national security adviser, I’d say, ‘get out of here.'”

What Obama has accomplished made something true for blacks that once was only true for whites: I can be anything. Read more..

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The Current: UMSL weighs in on affirmative action initiative

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