Rockhurst University to name building for Kansas City civil rights champion Alvin Brooks
Rockhurst University plans to create a center on its campus focused on faith and justice that will be named for iconic Kansas City civil rights leader Alvin Brooks.
Called the Alvin Brooks Center for Faith-Justice, the university intends to build the center to support its existing “faith-justice related efforts” including a chapel and ministry programs, officials said in a news release Tuesday. The private liberal arts university recently began raising money for the cause.
Rev. Thomas B. Curran, the university’s president, first broke the news last week during an annual event recognizing human relations at Kansas City’s Jewish Community Relations Bureau. At the time, Curran named Brooks along with Henry Bloch, founder of the tax-prep company H&R Block, as two people who “epitomize what it means to cooperate and co-labor with the gentle disposition of God’s providence to bring about ‘mishpat, tzedek,’ ‘justice in our time.’”
Brooks, 89, is a celebrated civic leader whose resume includes the creation of Ad Hoc, a citywide violent crime prevention program, and a short tenure as an elected member of the Kansas City City Council. He also worked as a Kansas City police officer during the 1960s.
Rockhurst University, a Jesuit school, has roughly 4,000 students enrolled. It was founded in 1910 in Kansas City’s Eastern 49-63 neighborhood.
This story was originally published November 23, 2021 at 8:16 PM.
