Still working on King's Dream in Hoffman Estates

The fact some Americans feel an image of a noose is appropriate mortifies the Rev. Clyde Brooks.

"There were 3,400 African-American males lynched from 1870 to 1930," Brooks said during Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast in Hoffman Estates.

Yet decades later, an image of a noose appeared last week on the cover of Golfweek - though it did cost an editor there his job.

The cover story was on the controversy swirling around comments made about Tiger Woods' dominance in the sport. A white Golf Channel anchor had jokingly suggested other golfers should "lynch him in a back alley."

On Monday, Brooks, president and chief executive officer of the Illinois Commission on Diversity and Human Relations, also pointed to the nooses hung in 2006 outside the Louisiana school in the Jena 6 case, where six black teens were charged with beating a white teen.

All of this, Brooks said, speaks to an enduring illusion that equality has been achieved, that there's a level playing field, that incidents like the noose hangings are harmless.

"You're not going to see it if you haven't felt it," Brooks said to about 170 people gathered Monday morning at Poplar Creek Country Club.

Other evidence of continued inequity, Brooks said, is closer to home. He pointed at the gap in the quality of education at mostly white schools in places like Schaumburg and Naperville, comparing them to what he said was the relatively poor education offered at mostly black schools in places like Robbins and Dixmoor.

Property taxes aren't the fair way to fund public schools, Brooks said.

The Sears Holding Associate Gospel Choir once again provided the sounds for the annual event. Hoffman Estates' cultural awareness commission has previously invited Brooks to speak.

The event celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the federal holiday which takes place on the third Monday in January to celebrate the slain civil rights leader's birthday, which is Jan. 15, 1929.

Brooks also praised the late-President Ronald Reagan for signing the bill which created the holiday in 1983.

Brooks, who met King before his 1968 assassination, also said that if King were living, he'd be actively fighting against clergy abuse of children and the war in Iraq. King would now be 79 years old.

"He would be for peace," Brooks said.

Hoffman Estates Mayor William McLeod echoed Brooks, saying we all must take on the responsibility to fight for racial equality 365 days a year.

"Don't go home," McLeod said, "and just say we did our bit."