DECRIMINALIZING RACE & POVERTY SYMPOSIUM

The Decriminalizing Race & Poverty Symposium aims to foster an open dialogue and explore innovative solutions to address the intersection of race and poverty within the criminal legal system.

The Symposium will feature conversations with local experts, a view inside the historic, landmark cases that have made the Southern Center a leading civil rights legal organization in the Deep South, and keynotes from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson and law professor, celebrated civil rights attorney, and former director of SCHR Stephen B. Bright followed by a book signing.

Isabel Wilkerson

Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the critically-acclaimed bestsellers The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste

Isabel Wilkerson is a nationally acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and highly sought-after speaker, whose brave and insightful work has changed how an entire country understands its history. In her groundbreaking New York Times bestsellers The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste, Wilkerson explores the Great Migration and the hidden hierarchy in America, uncovering “the missing puzzle piece of our country’s history” (The American Prospect). Wilkerson is one of today’s foremost thought leaders and public speakers whose talks are filled with empathy and insight, leaving audiences “buzzing,” “captivated” and rising to their feet in ovation.

stephen b. Bright

Stephen Bright teaches at the law schools at Yale and Georgetown Universities. He spent 34 years at the Southern Center for Human Rights, first as director and later as president and senior counsel. He is co-author, with James Kwak, of The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts (2023).

While at the Center, he tried capital cases before juries and argued cases in the state and federal appellate courts, including four capital cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court reversed all four, finding racial discrimination during jury selection in three and that the client was improperly denied an expert witness on mental health issues in the fourth.

He received the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award in 1998. The Daily Report legal newspaper named him “Agitator (and Newsmaker) of the Year” in 2003 for his contribution to bringing about creation of a public defender system in Georgia. His work with the Center is the subject of Robert L. Tsai, Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer’s Pursuit of Equal Justice for All (2024), William S. McFeely, Proximity to Death (1999), and Katya Lezin, Finding Life on Death Row (1999), and a film, Fighting for Life in the Death Belt (EM Productions, 2005).

The Southern Center for Human Rights is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and contributions are tax-deductible to the extent provided by law. SCHR's Federal Tax ID is 62-1025326.