Nationally recognized civil rights figure Prof. Anita Hill (Heller) addressed the changing definitions of race at the Brandeis Black Student Organization's Black History Month Celebration,Hill garnered widespread attention in 1991 when she accused U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his nomination hearings.

Formerly a law professor at the University of Oklahoma, Hill has been a professor of social policy, law and women's studies at Brandeis for the last decade.

BBSO co-president Shakiva Wade '07, who introduced Hill in the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center's Napoli Room, said this year's celebration will explore "what it really means to be black."

Hill, who titled her talk "A Funny Thing About Race," contrasted the treatment of race by her late mother, who drew from personal observations and experiences, and by the law in several court cases stretching from the 1896 establishment of the doctrine "separate but equal" to current cases on affirmative action.

Hill said she never understood why her mother's favorite baseball team was the Dodgers until, at age 76, her mother explained she still rooted for the team that made Jackie Robinson the first black player in Major League Baseball in 1947.

At a time when segregation still pervaded her family's life in Oklahoma, Jackie Robinson's integration "gave them a little more hope," Hill said.

But Hill said that for her mother, "blackness was based on more than skin color," but on trust and a feeling of community.

At the same time, Hill said, the Supreme Court arbitrarily decided what it meant to be white with outdated laws.

In two cases, the Supreme Court denied American citizenship to individuals from Japan and India even though their skin color was fair, Hill said. In the latter case, the court decided that "neither science nor skin color determined who was white" and that the "common man's concept" of race determined who was black and who was white.

"Their ideals were not that different from my mother's," Hill said, since both the court's reasoning and her mother's views were not based on scientific evidence.

Still, Hill said, she believed her mother's "jurisprudence would have been better" because she would have understood "the impact [the laws] have on people's lives."

"I thought her talk was phenomenal," said Deborah Cooper (TYP), the ICC representative for BBSO, explaining that she found the story about Hill's mother and her emphasis on the legacies of the past especially interesting.

Alwina Bennett, assistant dean of Student Life, who said she has attended every Black History Month opening for at least the last 10 years, said: "I felt that people walked away learning something. It was very special."

Hill said she felt encouraged for the future of blacks by the large outcry over Seinfeld star Michael Richards' racist tirade in a West Hollywood comedy club last year.