Smith College President Sarah Willie-LeBreton sat down with Deborah Archer ‘93 on Thursday evening to discuss her work as the president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Archer, currently also working as a professor and associate dean at New York University School of Law, spoke candidly about her experiences growing up and going to school in predominantly white areas, and how the experiences of her childhood shaped her work as a civil rights attorney.
Archer is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, and growing up in and around Hartford, Connecticut, she often felt out of place.
“When my parents moved us to Windsor, Connecticut, which is a suburb of Hartford, we were one of three Black families in that community. Our neighbors weren’t happy about that, and they took the opportunity to remind us of that as often as they could,” she told Willie-LeBreton.
Archer spoke about her experiences with racism at Smith, including a time when someone left a derogatory note under her door.
“The fall semester of my first year…a note was slipped under my door in Tyler calling me the N-word and telling me to go home,” she said. “I have stories like that where the world keeps…telling me that I don’t belong.”
Because of her race, Archer’s education consisted not only of academics, but also of learning how to have tough conversations around race. “My time at Smith…taught me how to act like I belong, because I do, ” she said. “I learned those lessons at Smith in part because of the challenges I had to face.”
Alongside her time at Smith, Archer discussed her work at the ACLU and the necessity of non-partisan institutions in the modern political climate. “It has been non-stop for months and months,” she said. “The best response to disorganized chaos is organized resistance.”
She also stressed the importance of fighting for the civil rights of everyone, regardless of political opinion. “We have sued every president since our founding,” she said. “We are 105 years old, and we have sued every president in that time.”
Furthermore, Archer and Willie-LeBreton discussed Archer’s recently published book “Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality.” Archer discussed some examples of the book, including how infrastructure was used to reinforce racial segregation in Atlanta, Georgia.
“Black and brown communities don’t have… usable sidewalks,” she said. “I remind people of the story of Michael Brown in Ferguson. That started from Michael Brown and a friend walking in the street… stopped by police to be ticketed for walking in the street, and it ended in his death.”
Towards the end of the talk, a bittersweet mood hung in the air as Archer and Willie-LeBreton discussed raising children of color in the United States.
“I have a twenty-one-year-old son, and I remember a couple of elections ago, he asked me if our family was going to move to Canada if our candidate did not win,” Willie-LeBreton said. “I remember saying to him, ‘No, this is our home. We are going to stay and struggle for what is right and fair for everyone.’”
Archer noted her own anxieties for her children. “I fight…to make sure that they never have to worry about their children the way I worry about them each and every time they leave the house,” she said. “Our responsibility is together we can do for our children what [our ancestors] did for us.”
