THE LEGACY OF 1808: DECONSTRUCTING RECONSTRUCTION
Thursday, November 13, 2008, 6:30 p.m.
Free. Reservations required. Please call 215.409.6700 or order online.
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
Annenberg Center for Education and Outreach
Kirby Auditorium
525 Arch Street
Independence Mall
Philadelphia, PA 19106
The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, popularly known as the “Reconstruction Amendments,” profoundly altered–among other things–the rights of individuals, the power of the federal government and the meaning of citizenship. To address the history and substance of the Reconstruction Amendments, and what those changes mean in our democracy today, the National Constitution Center welcomes their 2008 Visiting Scholars Ted Shaw and Martha Jones, as well as special guest Steven Calabresi for a discussion titled “Deconstructing Reconstruction.” This program is part of the Center’s Legacy of 1808 series and is presented in partnership with The American Constitution Society and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Steven Calabresi is the George C. Dix Professor of Law at Northwestern Law. He co-founded The Federalist Society and serves as the Chairman of the Society’s Board of Directors. He served in the Reagan and first Bush Administrations from 1985 to 1990 and advised Attorney General Edwin Meese III, Ronald Reagan’s Domestic Policy Chief, T. Kenneth Cribb, and he wrote speeches for former Vice President Dan Quayle. Since joining the Northwestern faculty in 1990, Calabresi has published more than 30 articles and comments in law reviews.
Martha Jones is assistant professor in the department of History and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, visiting assistant professor in the Law School at the University of Michigan, and a 2008 Visiting Scholar at the National Constitution Center. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University and a J.D. from the City University of New York School of Law. Her first book, All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African-American Public Culture, 1830-1900, is an intellectual and cultural history of black women's public lives in nineteenth-century America. Her current work explores the relationship of African-Americans in Atlantic World legal culture in the pre-Civil War period.
Ted Shaw, former director-counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) from 2004-08, is one of the nation’s leading voices in civil rights. He graduated from Wesleyan University with honors and from the Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Charles Evans Hughes Fellow. He also serves as Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Law School, as the second appointee to the Phyllis Beck Chair at Temple Law School, and as the 2008 Visiting Scholar at the National Constitution Center.
Moderating this program is Charles Lane, journalist and author of the recent book, The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction. Lane first learned of the Colfax Massacre case while covering the Supreme Court for The Washington Post. His journalism career has taken him from Washington to Tokyo, Berlin to Russia, and Havana to Johannesburg. A former editor of The New Republic, Lane has written for Foreign Affairs, The New York Review of Books, and The Atlantic. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard and studied law at Yale.
The Legacy of 1808 speaker series is a year long dialogue at the National Constitution Center with local and national experts about the history of the slave trade and its contemporary relevance. Legacy of 1808 explores issues of race, segregation, suffrage and individual rights in forums intended for people of all ages and backgrounds, revealing how the issue of slavery cast a dark shadow over the nation’s founding and influenced the evolution of American culture and society. Each program presents a unique panel, including a combination of historians, public officials, authors, journalists and commentators, and provides opportunities for questions from individuals from the Philadelphia region.
Please see our directions by public transportation. http://www.constitutioncenter.org/visiting/VisitorInformation/index.shtml#Map
For reservations, please call 215.409.6700. Programs of the National Constitution Center begin promptly and latecomers may not be admitted to the program. Please note that the program is subject to change.
Links:
American Constitution Society
University of Pennsylvania Law School
