Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock has announced the official opening of the Derek Oliver Research Institute for the Prevention of Black-on-Black Violence. Derek Oliver was a first-year student and a cornerback on the football team at Arkansas Baptist College. In 2012 he was shot and killed on a street near campus while helping a friend change a flat tire.
The mission of the institute, according to the college, is to provide “strategic planning and educational networking support to align students, community leaders, clergy, and the city and state governments” with the goal of the “eradication of Black-on-Black violence.”
Fitz Hill, who is stepping down as president of Arkansas Baptist College on September 1, said that “since 1980, approximately 324,000 Black people have been murdered by other Black people which is more soldiers killed in the Iraq War, Korean War, and Vietnam Conflict combined. I am dumbfounded by those statistics. This epidemic must be addressed and we must analyze the systemic reasons for this violence with a strategic game plan pointing to the solutions.”
