ADI holding Third Annual Mini Convening in Montgomery, AL

CARLISLE AND UNIVERSITY PARK, PA—The Antiracist Development Institute (ADI) at Penn State Dickinson Law will hold its Third Annual Mini Convening in Montgomery, AL, on June 28–June 30. The event will include time for participants to connect and learn during the visit to a city that has space and resources dedicated to educating people about America’s history of racial injustice.

The Mini Convening offers the opportunity for reflection during a planned tour of the Legacy Sites, which include a museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, and Montgomery Square, located near the final stretch of the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights.

ADI coalition members from across the country will attend, including contributors to the ADI-shepherded book series, Building an Antiracist Law School, Legal Academy, and Legal Profession, whose first three volumes will be published by University of California Press in January.

“Our annual Mini Convening presents a wonderful occasion where we relish our time in community, brainstorm ongoing antiracism endeavors, and delight in our mutual and individual accomplishments,” said ADI Associate Director Jill Engle, professor of clinical law at Penn State Dickinson Law. “The ADI is incredibly proud to be part of the important work of advancing racial equity in law schools, the profession, and the immeasurable people, systems, and organizations that our work can positively impact.”

ADI Program Manager TaWanda Hunter Stallworth emphasized the significance of the historic location for this Mini Convening. “We are grateful to coalition members across the nation who are choosing to spend time with us at this incredible venue. Together, we will reflect on the work that has been done by those who came before us and also look ahead to the many things we still want—nay, need—to accomplish,” said Stallworth.

Like last year’s second Mini Convening in Bethlehem, PA, this year’s edition will devote time to learning and practicing systems design while also holding space for reflection on and appreciation of the town’s courageous activists.

“Being in community with the Antiracist Development Institute and its partners at the EJI museum will be a homecoming to the truth,” said Karla McKanders, director of the Thurgood Marshall Institute at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), who will appear on a panel at the event. “The ground in Montgomery holds the weight of centuries of disenfranchisement and racialized terror. As the director of LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute, this space will deepen my resolve and remind me why the work is urgent and sacred. Gathering in community with advocates committed to antiracist development is necessary to the refounding of our democracy.”

Workshops and panel discussions

Attendees will visit the Legacy Sites and other historic venues on June 29. The day will wrap up at the Elevation Convening Center and Hotel with a dinner and fireside chat featuring Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Interim President and Chief Executive Officer Bryan Fair, the Thomas E. Skinner Professor of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law. A former chairman of the SPLC board and former EJI board member, Fair is a constitutional scholar and author of the book Notes of a Racial Caste Baby: Colorblindness and the End of Affirmative Action.

The next day of the Mini Convening will continue that valuable site engagement as Kristal Turner, an ADI systems designer who spent more than two decades as a Pennsylvania State Police Trooper, leads an optional two-mile walk from Montgomery Square to Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church and back.

In addition to featuring a design thinking workshop led by two valued ADI collaborators, Roger Williams University School of Law Professor and Assistant Dean for Curricular Innovation Nicole P. Dyszlewski and Penn State Lehigh Valley Assistant Teaching Professor Justin De Senso, the agenda for June 30 includes insights and inspiration from leaders whose antiracism work has deeply impacted legal education.

McKanders, Keisha Stokes-Hough, deputy director of legal management at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Jerome Dees, policy director for Southern Poverty Law Center Alabama, will speak on a panel moderated by Penn State Dickinson Law Associate Dean for Antiracism and Critical Pedagogy Shaakirrah R. Sanders.

"I’m thrilled to join the Antiracist Development Institute's Mini Convening in Montgomery, AL. Montgomery is the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, the headquarters of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the special place my family and I are blessed to call home,” said Stokes-Hough. “SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, and we are working to ensure that the legacy and promise of Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement are fully realized. I look forward to connecting with other thought leaders during the Mini Convening and doing the important work of looking back at our difficult history, to then look forward with clarity, shared purpose, and resolve."

Rhode Island Supreme Court Justice Melissa Long, the first Black justice to serve on the Rhode Island Supreme Court, and Judge Melissa R. DuBose of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, will join Equal Justice Initiative Senior Attorney Charlotte Morrison on a panel titled “Freedom Riders: A Hundred New England Yankee Jurists Panel,” which Dyszlewski will moderate.

Critical Legal Collective (CLC) president Athena D. Mutua, the Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar at University of Buffalo School of Law, and CLC Board Member Margaret Montoya, professor emerita of law at the University of New Mexico School of Law, will wrap up the scheduled programming with a roundtable discussion on ABA Standard 206.