When Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook became the president of Dillard, he set out to prepare his students for what he recognized to be “an increasingly competitive international and multicultural marketplace.” Focused on expanding students’ horizons, Cook created the Dillard University National Conference on Black-Jewish Relations in 1989. A year later, he would create the National Center for Black-Jewish Relations, making it the only center of its kind in the world.

It was Cook’s intention to “rejuvenate the Black-Jewish Coalition that was a driving force behind the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.” It was also Cook’s intention to expand students’ outlook on race relations while educating them about the understandings between African Americans and Jews. Recognizing that Dillard served as a representation of Black-Jewish relations, Cook dedicated the Avenue of the Oaks in honor of Rosa Freeman Keller, a Dillard trustee (1955-1998) and an advocate for racial equality in the city of New Orleans.

So appreciated were Cook’s efforts that he was named to the United State Holocaust Memorial Council by President Bill Clinton. He also received the Weiss Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews for International Leadership. In 1999, Cook published “Black-Jewish Relations: Dillard University National Conference Papers 1989-1997.”