The Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul plans to open the first academic center in the country focused on the intersection of the legal system and Black lives.
The Center for the Study of Black Life and Law is expected to launch this fall under founding director T. Anansi Wilson, a legal professor who joined the faculty this summer after obtaining their law degree from Howard University School of Law in 2017 and their doctorate last year from the University of Texas at Austin.
The curriculum on both theory and policy will be open to Mitchell Hamline students and the wider community, and the center is expected to host speakers and public events while providing a gathering place for community members and artists.
“We’re specifically naming and talking about a long array of racial violence and inequity that has been uniquely targeted at Black folks, and there’s a hunger for that kind of study right now in the country,” Wilson said in a written statement.
Two online events will be held shortly to set the stage. From 6 to 7:30 p.m. Monday, Wilson will join five Black and “queer” advocates — an educator, a poet, an artist, the assistant city solicitor for the city of Philadelphia and a criminal policy expert — in a panel discussion called “Honoring Black Life.” On April 5, Wilson will host an online discussion with Imani Perry, best-selling author of “South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation.”
Registration for both events is at mitchellhamline.edu.
The Center for the Study of Black Life and the Law will be the seventh center or institute at Mitchell Hamline, joining the Center for Law and Business, the Dispute Resolution Institute, the Health Law Institute, the Institute to Transform Child Protection, the Intellectual Property Institute and the Native American Law and Sovereignty Institute.
