Please join us the evening of May 11 for a powerful documentary film, Racist Roots, and a panel discussion with community experts and advocates, followed by dessert and coffee. The event is free and open to the community.
The 25-minute documentary reveals the North Carolina death penalty’s deep entanglement with slavery, lynching, and racism — and inspires people to join the movement to transform the criminal legal system. It includes the stories and voices of advocates, artists, exonerees, and people on North Carolina’s death row.
Racist Roots is a project of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, in collaboration with scholars, advocates, historians, artists, poets and people directly affected by the death penalty. It aims to place North Carolina’s modern death penalty within the context of 400 years of history and to expose its connection to the aims of white supremacy.
Panelists include:
Henderson Hill
Hill is senior counsel for the ACLU, following decades of service as a public defender. He previously served as director of the NC Death Penalty Resource Center and as a partner at the civil rights law firm, Ferguson Stein Chambers in Charlotte. Henderson is a graduate of Lehman College and Harvard Law School. He has taught courses on trial advocacy at UNC, Duke and Harvard law schools, and internationally.
Alfred Rivera
Rivera spent 22 months on Death Row before being acquitted of crimes he was previously convicted of.
Dr. Rodney Sadler, Jr., moderator
Dr. Sadler is Associate Professor of Bible and director of the Center for Social Justice and Reconciliation at Union Presbyterian Seminary (Charlotte Campus). He is a graduate of Howard University, Howard University School of Divinity, and earned a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible and Biblical Archaeology from Duke University.
The event is sponsored by Center for Death Penalty Litigation, Charlotte Clergy Coalition for Justice, Coalition for Truth and Reconciliation, Freedom Fighting Missionaries, NAACP Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Myers Park Baptist Church, Reimagining America Project, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, and the Stan Greenspon Holocaust and Social Justice Education Center.
Details and Registration:
Time: Thursday, May 11, 6:30 – 7:45 pm
Place: Queens University, Greenhoot Recital Hall in the Gambrell Center; 2319 Wellesley Ave., Charlotte, NC, 28274
RSVP/Registration: https://tinyurl.com/mte4638t
For more information, contact Judy Schindler, Schindlerj@queens.edu