How Powerful Black Women Spanning Three Centuries Used Law to Combat Racism

Celebrate Black History Month with the Women in Law Section and Professor Gloria Browne-Marshall, as she highlights courageous Black women from the last three centuries. Professor Browne-Marshall will tell the fascinating and inspiring stories of well-known (and lesser-known), influential Black women, including Queen Nzingha, Mary Black, Elizabeth Jennings, Sojourner Truth, and Shirley Chisholm, including how the law was an enemy to these women. She will explain how these Black women were able to turn the law into a weapon they used to combat discrimination and fight against race laws and criminal injustice. Professor Browne-Marshall will focus on cases such as the Salem Witch Trials; the Ruby McCollum case, a landmark trial in the struggle for civil rights; and Cooper v. Power, finding racial gerrymandering in Brooklyn. She will also explain how these women used perseverance, intelligence, and the law to create platforms from which they lifted others as they rose.

Speaker

Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, Professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY)