By Celena Glaghassi, Staff Writer
On Thursday, Nov. 20, the Young Americans for Freedom invited Vince Everett Ellison, an Amazon best-selling author, to give his lecture, “Everything You’ve Been Taught about Race Relations is Wrong.” The event ran from 7—8 p.m. and was held in room 260 of the College Union Building. The president of YAF, Tyler Seeman, began the event by introducing himself and the organization.
“We (YAF) accomplish our mission by providing essential conferences, seminars, educational materials, internships and campus lectures like this one for young people across the country,” Seeman said.
“Young Americans Foundation is the leading organization for young conservatives with more than 60 years of history and contacts on more than 2000 campuses. We help conservative students find professional support and take action.”
Next, vice chairman Nick Alverson introduced the speaker, Vince Everett Ellison. Ellison was born on a cotton plantation in Tennessee, where his parents worked as sharecroppers. His family started the Ellison Family Gospel Singing Group, to which he dedicated much of his childhood and young adulthood. In his later adulthood years, Ellison worked as a correctional officer for the Kirkland Correctional Institution in South Carolina. In 2019, he wrote his first book, “Iron Triangle: Inside the Liberal Democrat Plan to Use Race to Divide Christians and America in their Quest for Power and How We Can Defeat Them.”
Gettysburg YAF Vice Chairman Nick Alverson introducing the speaker, Vince Everett Ellison. (Photo Grace Jurchack/The Gettysburgian)
Ellison began his speech by sharing his frustrations with what he believes is a general inability for people to engage in civil discourse. He discussed the importance of active listening and lively debates. He cited examples of debates like Moses and Pharaoh Ramses II, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglass and Galileo and his debates against the Vatican. Ellison encouraged the audience to seek out differing opinions and engage with people who hold views different from their own, emphasizing that “It’s only talk, it can’t hurt you.”
As per his promotion of traditional family values, Ellison gave credit to his father for helping him get to where he is today.
“My father taught me that color meant nothing. There’s good people and there’s bad people. You’ll find good white folks; you’ll find bad white folks. You find good black people; you’ll find bad black people. Color means nothing. Judge every man based on who he is. That’s it,” said Ellison.
Ellison then explained to the audience that he has learned from his experience that people have no power over a person until they are granted power. He compared white supremacy to voodoo, stating that, “it has no power unless you believe in it.” Ellison believes that by having confidence in oneself, a person can take power away from an oppressor. He shared an example of how he found out one day, from an FBI report, that a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) had lived in his town for years. According to Ellison, his father had warned that man many years prior to stay away from his family, and he did.
Vince Everett Ellison speaking to the audience. (Photo Grace Jurchack/The Gettysburgian)
“People are not discriminated against or oppressed because of their color. They are oppressed and they are discriminated against because they are weak,” said Ellison.
Next, he discussed diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring policies, describing positions attained in such a way as “shameful,” and compared them to prostitution and slave catchers. He argued that people should be hired based on their own work instead of “lowering the score so [they] can get in.”
He then spoke on his next point regarding the stereotypes of underprivileged Black people in America. During his time at the Kirkland Correctional Institution, he explained, he witnessed many Black men being locked up, and when he asked his supervisor about it, he was told that “evil, rich white conservatives hate black people.” This experience inspired Ellison to resign from his post at the prison, wanting to see firsthand what was causing such high crime rates among Black people. According to Ellison, what he found shocked him: “I saw no evil, rich white conservatives anywhere. Matter of fact, you see a unicorn before you saw one. But what I did see was a lot of Black liberals making money off the chaos,” he told the audience.
His next point involved education and public schooling. Ellison shared his belief that the reason the U.S. is ranked low in education compared to other countries is because the government is, “running God out of the public square, taking the Bible out of the school, putting porn— putting pornography in, letting the school sexually groom your children, [and] having drag queens coming to the school to shake their bodies in children’s faces.”
Ellison also made a claim that Harvard University allegedly stated that schools and universities are more segregated than they were before Brown v. Board. He said that the only evidence supporting the alleged statement is a Stanford University study from May 6, 2024, which he said showed that segregation between black and white students increased by 64% since 1988 in public schools. He added that, also in that study, Stanford University professor of poverty and inequality in education, Sean Reardon, stated that, “school segregation is not at pre-brown levels, but they are high and have been rising steadily since the late 1980s.” He elaborated this point further, discussing how Black people, and people in general, should only want to be in places where they are accepted, and he urged the audience to “be where you are wanted.”
In one of his final points, Ellison mentioned what he had referred to on the Charlie Kirk Show, back in January of 2024, as “the myth of Martin Luther King.” He said that in one particular section of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, King said that 100 years after the emancipation proclamation, in 1963, Black people were still not free. Ellison disagreed with King, stating that he (Ellison) was born free.
“I tell you, slavery is a choice, because you’re choosing it,” he said.
After his lecture, Ellison welcomed questions from the audience, encouraging them to disagree and engage in a debate with him. Gettysburg College Director of Religious and Spiritual Life and College Chaplain Michael Bright asked Ellison to clarify his views regarding segregation and the progress made by the Civil Rights Movement. Ellison emphasized his views on acceptance and self-worth, stating, “If they don’t want you there, why would you want to be there?”
Vince Everett Ellison taking questions from community members. (Photo Grace Jurchack/The Gettysburgian)
The next question came from a student, who argued that Ellison took King’s words out of context and read excerpts from the speech, including “One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination,” and, “One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.”
Ellison reasserted that these sentiments from the speech were false and emphasized that he was “born free.”
To conclude the event, Ellison restated his point about confidence and self-worth.
“You have to know who you are, forget everybody else,” he said.
(Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article misstated the College Chaplain’s name. – E. Prieto).
