MLK Week at RWU Law

The week of January 19, 2009 was quite a week in American History, and at Roger Williams Law!  Monday the country celebrated Martin Luther King Day, Tuesday saw the inauguration of the first African American President of the United States, and Saturday was the 16th anniversary of the death of Justice Thurgood Marshall.  In the midst of all of this activity the law school celebrated its 4th Annual week-long MLK Celebration .

Each year RWU Law offers a different MLK week focus; in recent years the theme was environmental justice and police/community relations.  This year the focus was on poverty.  Included in the week’s activities were a service project, a movie screening, and the keynote address.  Over 100 students gathered in our Appellate Courtroom to watch (and cheer) President Obama’s inauguration, and the excitement spilled over into the keynote address by Prof. Sheryll Cashin the next day.  And what a talk it was: she choked up as she wove her experiences at the Capitol on the previous day into her reflections on her parents’ role in the civil rights movement of the previous generation, and especially the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968.  A last initiative of Dr. King, it featured sharecroppers and other rural poor forming a caravan of covered wagons, bound for the National Mall.  (Sheryll’s father actually bought the mules that pulled the wagons!).  It was a great talk, with a lively Q&A afterward with the appreciative audience.

Justin Pruett, 1L, Prof. Sheryll Cashin, Angela Alexander, 2L