Gov. Warner and Oliver Hill to Headline University of Richmond Conference on Human Rights and Inequality
March 19, 2004
Virginia Gov. Mark Warner will participate in a conference on human rights and inequality commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education at the University of Richmond School of Law March 29-30.
Prominent figures from the civil rights struggles of the United States and South Africa will join Warner on the two-day program, including Oliver W. Hill, an activist and attorney who argued Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward (Va.), and former educators and students from Prince Edward.
Amii-Omara Otunnu, UNESCO Chair in Comparative Human Rights at the University of Connecticut, and Louis Pollak, senior judge, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and one of the authors of the brief in Brown v. Board of Education, also will speak.
The conference is open to the public at no charge. Sessions will be held at Jepson Alumni Center and the School of Law.
Warner will participate in a "town hall" discussion moderated by Rodney A. Smolla, dean of the law school and a First Amendment scholar, on March 29 at 7:45 p.m. at Jepson Alumni Center. The discussion will focus on the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine of public education, paving the way for complete desegregation of public schools.
On March 30, Otunnu, Smolla and Henry L. Marsh III, Virginia state senator and chair of the Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, will welcome participants. A panel discussion in the law school's Moot Court Room, titled "Historical Overview of Inequality of Education in Virginia," will focus on the Davis case. Hill, Marsh and former Prince Edward educators and students will speak.
A subsequent session will examine educational inequalities in South Africa and feature Phillip F. Iya, professor at the University of Fort Hare, South Africa, and Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela, professor at Michigan State University.
A representative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will give the luncheon address.
A 1:30 p.m. session will focus on housing inequalities. Professors from law schools at Howard University, University of Seattle and City University of New York will speak, along with Herbert N. Booth, president of the Virginia Realtors Association.
The closing session will provide a historical overview of both educational and housing inequalities in both countries and will include presentations by Pollak; Matthew J. Perry Jr., senior judge, U.S. District Court in South Carolina; Lynn Huntley, president of the Southern Education Association; and Margaret P. Spencer, judge of Richmond Circuit Court.
About 150 area high school students will participate in a workshop on Brown v. Board of Education at the law school March 28 before attending the session with Warner on March 29.
Co-sponsors with Richmond School of Law include the UNESCO Chair at
the University of Connecticut, University of Richmond Jepson School of
Leadership Studies, Virginia State University's Institute for the
Study of Race Relations, Virginia Union University's Department
of History and Longwood University's Office of Minority Affairs.
For more information, call (804) 289-8682.