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Civil rights activist and lawyer Derrick Bell will speak at U of L Feb. 21 about the historic 1954 Supreme Court school desegregation ruling and other racial issues.
Bell’s free, public talk on “Why I Would Have Dissented to Brown vs. Board of Education” will begin at 11 a.m. in Bigelow Hall, Miller Information Technology Center.
The College of Arts and Sciences and the Louisville discussion group NETWORK (New Energy To Work Out Racial Kinks) are sponsoring Bell?s visit to the Belknap Campus.
He also will speak at a NETWORK lunch at 12:30 p.m. at the University Club. His topic there is “Faces at the Bottom of the Well,” also the partial title of one of his books. Reservations are required for the $15 lunch by Feb. 19; call 0578 or e-mail mfbrow03@louisville.edu
Bell, a visiting professor at New York University School of Law, has worked to advance the academic study of race as a legal issue. His books include “Race, Racism and American Law,” “Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism,” “Constitutional Conflicts,” “And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice” and “Confronting Authority: Reflections of an Ardent Protester.”
He formerly was a Harvard Law school professor and Oregon Law School dean; he left both posts in protest of hiring decisions related to diversity issues. He also has served as executive director of the Western Center on Law and Poverty at the University of Southern California Law School and as counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
