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UGA SCHOOL OF LAW TO HOST EVENTS COMMEMORATING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION

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Monday, March 29, 2004 WRITER: Brittany Cox, 706/542-5172, lawcomm@uga.edu CONTACT: Heidi Murphy, 706/542-5172, hmurphy@uga.edu UGA SCHOOL OF LAW TO HOST EVENTS COMMEMORATING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION ATHENS, Ga. – To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision, the University of Georgia School of Law will host a program on April 7 to reflect on the past, evaluate the present and discuss the future of educational integration, specifically at Georgia Law. To start the day’s events, Georgia Law’s first African-American graduate will deliver the 97th Sibley Lecture at 3:30 p.m. in the University Chapel. A 1966 graduate of the law school, Chester C. Davenport is currently the managing director of Georgetown Partners, L.L.C., a private merchant-banking firm based in Bethesda, Md. Prior to founding Georgetown Partners in 1988, he was the chairman of GTE Consumer Services, a cellular company, and Envirotest Systems Corporation, the world’s leading provider of auto emissions testing services. In addition, he served as assistant secretary of transportation for policy and international affairs from 1977 to 1979 during the Carter Administration. A panel discussion will immediately follow the Sibley Lecture. The panel will feature prominent African Americans who all have a connection to Georgia Law. The panelists will be Davenport; Georgia Supreme Court Justice Robert Benham, the second African-American graduate of Georgia Law and the first African American to serve on Georgia’s Supreme Court; current third-year law student Francys Johnson; Albany State University Assistant Professor Sharon “Nyota” Tucker, the first African-American female graduate of Georgia Law; and U.S. District Court Senior Judge Horace T. Ward, the first African American to seek admission to Georgia Law. Law school Associate Professor Larry E. Blount will serve as the panel’s moderator. Concluding the day’s program will be a commemorative dinner featuring Tucker as the keynote speaker. Prior to becoming a professor, Tucker worked at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in San Francisco, Calif., and Georgia Legal Services in Albany, Ga., and served as an attorney in private practice. In 1991, she was selected as a Fulbright-Hays Fellow and traveled to Southern Africa to study social and economic changes in that region of the world. The dinner will be held at the Holiday Inn, downtown Athens, and is open to the public. For cost information, please contact the law school’s Lisa C. Mathis at (706) 542-7959 before April 2. Additional information about the day’s events can be obtained by calling (706) 542-5172. The Brown v. Board of Education program, hosted by Georgia Law, is proudly sponsored by the Charles Loridans Foundation of Atlanta in tribute to the late John A. Sibley. Sibley was a 1911 graduate of the law school. ##

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