This year’s A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Memorial Lecture, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Center for Africana Studies, featured Damon T. Hewitt L’00, presenting “A Third Reconstruction: Toward a New Vision of Racial Justice.”
Established in 1989 and presented annually in the fall, the lecture was created to honor the Honorable Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.’s contribution to American law and scholarship, highlighting topics, events, or figures of historical or contemporary significance within African American and African diaspora communities focusing on history, sociology, social justice, and law.
A pioneer for civil rights, Judge Higginbotham Jr. was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 and was the nation’s first Black district court judge. He served over 30 years as a federal judge and was the Senior Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In 1995, President Bill Clinton appointed Judge Higginbotham to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“Judge Higginbotham was a towering figure, a distinguished scholar, a jurist, and an advocate for civil rights who left an indelible mark on the law and this institution,” said Dean and Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law Sophia Z. Lee. “Throughout his career he blended a commitment to the law with the pursuit of racial justice.”
As an adjunct professor at the Law School in 1974, Judge Higginbotham introduced the course “Race, Racism, and American Law.” A prolific academic, he published hundreds of articles as well as two volumes of an intended four volume series on race and the law that was to span from 1619 to 1964, in what Lee called “the 1619 Project decades before the 1619 Project.”
“Judge Higginbotham was, in other words, a pathbreaker, a dedicated public servant, a freedom fighter, a field-defining academic, and a truly remarkable man,” she said. “As a law school, we’re indebted to him.”
The evening also brought a meaningful intersection between Judge Higginbotham and Hewitt.
In 1962 President John F. Kennedy appointed Higginbotham as the first Black member of the Federal Trade Commission. The following year, then-Commissioner Higginbotham was at the White House when Kennedy called for the formation of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Nearly 60 years later, Hewitt, now the President and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee, returned to his alma mater to deliver the address named after one of the Lawyers’ Committee’s founding members.
Hewitt dedicated more than 20 years to civil rights litigation and policy, and he has held leadership roles in the nonprofit, philanthropic, and public sectors.
Prior to joining the Lawyers’ Committee, Hewitt was the inaugural executive director of the Executives’ Alliance for Boys and Men of Color as well as the chief liaison from the philanthropic community to the White House on policy issues impacting young men of color. He also worked for more than a decade as an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Hewitt’s address, “A Third Reconstruction: Toward a New Vision of Racial Justice,” called for a fundamental reordering of the legal, political, and social relationships among Americans and between Americans and the government.
“As much progress as we’ve made over the years, there are some things that seem just so baked in and so fundamental,” he said. “Yes, something’s not quite right now, but something hasn’t been right for quite a long time.”
Hewitt spoke about the challenges facing civil rights lawyers today, inducing proving intent in racial discrimination cases and recent decisions such as Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended race-based affirmative action in college admissions, effectively taking a color-blindness approach to the Constitution and legislation.
“No matter what a Supreme Court tries to tell us, no matter what pundits try to tell us, our past was certainly race conscious in the most horrific of ways,” said Hewitt. “Our present is race conscious, because we live and feel the impacts of racism every day. Our future is going to be race conscious as well, but it doesn’t have to be in a negative way, within the trap of color blindness.”
Hewitt’s Third Reconstruction would parallel the First and Second Reconstructions, which brought the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments as well as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. He called for bold new legislation to restore longstanding civil rights protections while addressing contemporary discrimination like those that affect voter suppression, classroom censorship, workplace equity, bodily autonomy, police violence, and digital redlining.
Looking toward the future, Hewitt shared a message he imparted to his staff in the wake of the 2024 Presidential election.
“In these times I’m reminded that democracy is worth waiting for,” he said. “Democracy as we define it, is worth fighting for. I’m reminded that democracy is a choice, but I’m also reminded democracy is what we make it. That’s our charge, that’s our challenge.”
Original source can be found here.