HILL: WOMEN'S OPPRESSION EAKENS NATION

Violence and oppression against women weaken the nation, University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill told a crowd of more than 800 Monday at the Show Me Center.

"I believe Dr. King would be appalled by the level of violence faced by women in America today," Hill said. "The violence and oppression, including sexual harassment, waged on women weaken us all, and it must stop if Dr. King's dream is to become fully a part of our history."

Hill was keynote speaker at the 10th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast. Her appearance drew a record crowd to the event, sponsored by Southeast Missouri State University. The crowd was comprised largely of university personnel and non-students.

Hill sparked controversy with her sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas during Thomas' Supreme Court nomination hearings.

Sixty percent of women in the work place experience sexual harassment, she said.

Deliberate acts of violence are the leading cause of death or injury to women in the work place, said Hill. Domestic violence is the single-largest cause of injury to women in the United States, Hill said.

In 1993 in Missouri, nearly 29,000 arrests stemmed from domestic violence, she said.

Hill offered little comment about the 1991 Thomas hearings that propelled her into the national spotlight. She refused to take questions from the media following the speech.

She did respond, however, to written questions from the audience.

She said the hearings were terrible. "They reflected badly on us as a society and as a government."

She said King had been advised not to speak out against the Vietnam War, but did so anyway out of principle.

"Like he, I spoke out when others thought I should keep my mouth shut," Hill said.

"My faith in God is really what has kept me going over the past three years," Hill said.

Hill grew up in a rural Oklahoma church where women sat on one side of the aisle and men on the other. "My real role models were the women in my church," she said.

She said Americans involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s wanted both racial and gender equality. "I refuse to believe that those who suffered wanted equality only for men."

She said America is going through a crisis in race relations and a public reluctance to discuss racism.

History that arises from struggle for justice and peace can't be abandoned because the times have changed, she said.

It has become unpopular to be aligned with civil rights, which is viewed as a special interest, Hill said. But she insisted, "We cannot be embarrassed to be aligned with that special interest."