Title

Movement Lawyers, Courts, and Social Change

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2011

Abstract

Tomiko Brown-Nagin, the Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of History at the University of Virginia School of Law presented the Buck Colbert Franklin Memorial Civil Rights Lecture on Thursday, February 17, at 6 p.m. at The University of Tulsa College of Law. Her presentation was entitled, "Movement Lawyers, Courts, and Social Change."

Prof. Tomiko Brown-Nagin also appeared on TU PUblic Radio's Studio Tulsa to discuss her lecture.

Brown-Nagin's lecture was based on selections from her book, Courage to Dissent, which is about lawyers, courts, and community-based activism during the Civil Rights Era. Brown-Nagin holds a doctorate in history from Duke University and a law degree from Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She teaches courses on American social and legal history, constitutional law, education law and policy, and public interest law. She has written widely on civil rights history and law, and published in both law and history journals. She was the Charles Warren Visiting Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School in fall 2008. law book Prior to teaching, Brown-Nagin clerked for Judge Robert L. Carter of the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, and Judge Jane Roth of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She also worked as a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York. Before entering private practice, Brown-Nagin held the Charles Hamilton Houston Fellowship at Harvard Law School and the Samuel I. Golieb Fellowship in Legal History at New York University School of Law. About the Buck Colbert Franklin Memorial Civil Rights Lecture The Buck Colbert Franklin Memorial Civil Rights Lecture honors one of the first black attorneys in Tulsa and Oklahoma. In the aftermath of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, Franklin served his community and his profession by assisting victims of the riot. Working from a tent because his office and home were destroyed during the riot, he represented clients, filed briefs, and fought back against the injustice of the riot and the city’s assault on the Tulsa black community. He won a critical court decision striking down a city ordinance designed to prevent blacks from rebuilding their homes in Tulsa. The lecture also honors the legacy of his son, the distinguished historian John Hope Franklin, who delivered the first lecture in the series.

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