About the event:

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute--along with partners Cumberland School of Law, Miles College Law School, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and the University of Alabama School of Law--convened its 3rd Annual Spring Conference at the BCRI on April 29-30, 2004. 

The theme of the conference was "Brown at 50: Where Do We Go From Here?"  Honorable Judge U. W. Clemon delivered the keynote address on Friday afternoon, April 29, to the conference audience, which gathered in the historic Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

For more on the BCRI conference and the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown decision, including links to resource materials useful to further discussion of the case, click here.>>

                                                    Panel participants in the "Brown at 50" conference discuss the personal impact of the Brown decision and public school desegregation on their lives. Pictured above (l to r):  Carol Pope, Glennon Threatt, James Armstrong, and David Osman.

About the speaker:                                     

Judge U.W. Clemon (pictured, above left) is no stranger to Brown and its impact on American society.  With his apointment to the federal bench by President Jimmy Carter on June 30, 1980, Clemon became the first and only African-American to be appointed to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. 

While a student at Miles College, Clemon was Vice-President of the campus Anti-Injustice Committee, which encouraged students to refuse patronizing stores that practiced racial segregation in service and employment. 

A graduate of Columbia University School of Law, Clemon began his professional career as a civil rights lawyer specializing in job discrimination and school desegregation cases.  From 1968 to 1980, he was a partner in the Birmingham law firm of Adams & Clemon.  In 1974, Clemon became one of the first two African-Americans elected to the Alabama Senate since Reconstruction.  He served in that body until his appointment to the federal bench.

Judge Clemon is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Law and Justice Award from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the William H. Hastie Award from the Judicial Council of the National Bar Association.  In 1986, he was presented with the National Bar Association's highest honor, the C. Francis Stradford Award.  Clemon is also a founding Board Member of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.