About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

8 JRGE 1 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/jlorcgd8 and id is 1 raw text is: TOURO LAW JOURNAL OF RACE, GENDER, & ETHNICITY THE NORTHEAST PEOPLE OF COLOR CONFERENCE ROBERT V. WARD, JR. The first Northeast People of Color (NEPOC) conference was held at Western New England School of Law (WNESL) in Springfield, Massachusetts in the spring of 1992 or 1993 and was hosted by Len Baynes, who is now Dean of University of Houston Law School. NEPOC grew out of Len's profound sense of isolation. He believed people of color in the academy needed a safe place to develop their scholarship and to socialize. Keep in mind the 1990s were a time when the scholarship written by professors of color was under attack. The movement called Critical Race Theory was in its infancy and a safe space was needed for those who had just started writing, or had decided not to write traditional law review pieces. In either case many of our home institutions were not supportive and many faculty of color were isolated in schools that had very few minority faculty and few if any senior faculty of color. Instead of blossoming, minority law professors and their scholarship were withering away on the vine. While folks were gathered at Springfield, I volunteered to host the next meeting at New England Law School (NESL). A NEPOC planning committee came together that weekend and planning for the second conference began. The NESL conference came off well because Boston was easy to get to and, more importantly, people were hungry for the opportunity to collaborate and socialize. Deborah Post and I did not actually meet each other until the NESL conference itself but Professor Post soon became a permanent member of the planning committee. I believe Professor Post has participated in every conference since then. Although the composition of the committee changes as the event moves from school to school, there are many people who have played an important part in several conferences including Pamela Edwards, Elaine Chiu who succeeded Len Baynes as Director of the Ron Brown Center, and Fabio Arcila and then Deseriee Kennedy from Touro organized the work in progress sessions. All of the planning for NEPOC is done by phone and email. Early on NEPOC began recognizing the contributions of faculty of color who were labeled pioneers or trailblazers At the 1998 meeting of NEPOC at Touro Law School, faculty of color who had been teaching for over twenty years were honored. Derrick Bell not only spoke and read from his book, Gospel Choirs, he brought a choir with him that heightened the experience with their moving rendition of spirituals. His contribution to the symposium issue published by the Touro Law Review, The First Colony, speculated metaphorically about the survival of those people of color who were the first to take up law teaching in what were essentially all white institutions. That meeting was the first of many times that we recognized and honored those who paved the way in the legal academy for minority faculty. One of my fondest memories of NEPOC is the year we recognized Frank Bae as a trailblazer. Frank, an Asian-American, had been NESL's librarian for more than two decades. Until then I did not fully understand how much and for how long he had suffered in silence. Our recognition of him was easily his happiest moment in his professional career. He never stopped thanking me and talking about it. 1

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most