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The lecture by legal scholar Alfred Brophy of the University of Alabama Law School is sponsored by the Student Division of the Institute of Bill of Rights Law, the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, and the Black Law Students Association. A question & answer period and a reception will follow. Earlier this year, the Virginia Legislature became the first state legislature in the nation to issue an official apology for slavery. Earlier this month, in an emotional speech, the mayor of London issued a historic apology for slavery. Currently, legislative bodies throughout the nation are debating whether to issue their own apologies.

On Thursday, September 20, 2007, University of Alabama Law Professor Alfred Brophy will speak on the topic of apologies for slavery. Co-sponsored by the Student Division of the Institute of Bill of Rights Law, the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, and the Black Law Students Association, the presentation will begin at 3:30 p.m. in room 120 at the Law School. It is free and open to the public. A question-and-answer period and a reception will follow.

Brophy will discuss the controversy over slavery and apologies generally, the stark divide along racial lines on this issue, and some of the moral issues on either side. He will also discuss the College of William & Mary’s connections to slavery -- in particular, Thomas R. Dew, William & Mary’s president in the 1830s-1840s. Dew is the author of, among other works, “Review of the Debates in the Virginia Legislature,” one of the most reprinted arguments on slavery in the years leading to the Civil War. Brophy’s presentation aims to provide an opportunity to talk about the virtues and pitfalls of apologizing for slavery and to remind people about the connections of the past to the present.

In addition to teaching law at the University of Alabama, Brophy has written Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921 (Oxford University Press, 2002), and [/i]Reparations Pro and Con[/i] (Oxford University Press, 2006). He currently is working on books on jurisprudence in the Old South, and the idea of equality in early twentieth-century African-American thought and its relationship to the Civil Rights Movement. Brophy graduated from Columbia Law School and has a Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University.

For more information about this event, please contact Joy Anastasia Thompson at jathom@wm.edu, (757) 345-6884.