WA LTER R. ALLEN is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Allen’s research and teaching focus on family patterns, socialization and personality development, race and ethnic relations, social inequity, and higher education. Among his more than fifty publications are The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America (coauthored with Reynolds Farley), College in Black and White: African American Students in Predominately White and Historically Black Public Universities (coauthored with Edgar Epps and Nesba Z. Han — iff), Beginnings: The Social and Affective Development of Black American Families (coedited with Geraldine Brookins and Margaret Spencer), and Black American Families, 1965-84 (coedited with Richard Engish and Jo Anne Hall).
MICHAEL AWKWARD received his Ph. D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986. He taught English for ten years at the University of Michigan before returning to Penn, where he specializes in contemporary Afro-American literary and cultural studies. In addition to being the editor of New Essays on "Their Eyes Were Watching God," Professor Awkward is the author of Negotiating Difference, Race, Gender, and the Politics of Positionality and of Inspiriting Influences, and Tradition, Revision, and Afro-American Women’s Novels.
HOUSTON A. BAKER, JR., is the director of the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture and an Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. He obtained his undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, from Howard University and his graduate degrees from UCLA. Baker is the author, editor, or coeditor of numerous books, including Black American Literature, Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory (1984), Long Black Song: Essays in Black Literature and Culture (1990), and Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy (1993).
DERRICK BELL has worked as a Justice Department lawyer, a staff attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a Deputy Director for Civil Rights at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and Director of the Western Center on Law and Poverty in Los Angeles. In 1969 he joined the Harvard Law School faculty and became its first black tenured member in 1971. Professor Bell resigned in 1989 to become the dean at the University of Oregon Law School. Since 1991, Bell has been a visiting professor at the New York University Law School. Among his many well-known books, Professor Bell has written And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism, and the law school textbook Race, Racism and American Law.
KEVIN BROWN is a professor of law at Indiana University where he teaches courses on Torts, Law and Education, and Race, American Society, and the Law. Before beginning his teaching career, Brown worked on municipal and real estate finance matters for the law firm of Baker and Daniels. A recipient of the Ira C. Batman research fellowship, Professor Brown has written many articles, including "Separate and Equal," "Revisiting the Supreme Court’s Opinion in Brown v. Board of Education from a Multiculturalist Perspective," and "The Dilemma of Legal Discourse for Public Educational Responses to the ‘Crisis’ Facing African-American Males."
RUFUS BURROW, JR., is Associate Professor of Church and Society at Christian Theological Seminary (CTS). He received his Ph. D. in social ethics with a minor in philosophy of religion from Boston University. Dr. Burrow is an active member in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and has served as an instructor with Project Upward Bound and as a probation investigator and counselor. He is a frequent contributor to many publications, including The Journal of the ITC and Personalist Forum. Prior to joining the faculty at CTS, Dr. Burrow was the Director of the Young Adult Conservation Corps for the Pontiac Area Urban League.
DEVON W. CARBADO is Acting Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, where he teaches Constitutional Criminal Procedure, Criminal Adjudication, and Critical Race Theory. He received his B. A. from UCLA and his J. D. from Harvard Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of The Harvard Blackletter Law Journal. Professor Carbado joined the law firm of Latham & Watkins in Los Angeles before being appointed as a Faculty Fellow and Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Iowa College of Law. His work has been published in
the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, the Harvard Women’s Law Journal, and Callaloo.
KIMBERLE WILLIAMS CRENSHAW is a professor of law at Columbia University Law School and the UCLA School of Law. She received her J. D. from Harvard Law School and her L. L.M. at Wisconsin. She is a founding member of the Critical Race Theory Workshop. Her articles on race and gender have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review. Her article "A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Law" remains one of the most influential works on law, identity, and antidiscrimination theory. She is the coeditor of the recently published Critical Race Theory: Key Documents That Formed the Movement. Crenshaw’s work was employed as the basis for certain key equality provisions of South Africa’s new constitution.
JEROME McCRISTAL CULP received his M. A. in economics and his J. D. from Harvard University. Professor Culp has been a permanent member of the Duke University School of Law faculty since 1985 and has also been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, New York University, and the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. He has also served as the Director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at Duke. Torts, Black Legal Scholarship, and Sexuality and the Law are several of the many topics Professor Culp teaches at Duke. He has testified as an expert for plaintiffs in several suits challenging state constitutional and city charter amendments that attempted to eliminate civil rights protections for gays, lesbians, and homosexuals, and he is a member of the national board of Parents, Family, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
HARLON L. DALTON is a professor of law at Yale Law School, where he teaches Critical Race Theory, Evidence, Legal Culture, and Civil Procedure. He received his B. A. from Harvard and his J. D. from Yale. After passing the bar, Dalton worked for the Legal Action Center, the Office of the Solicitor General, and the Center for Legal Education and Urban Policy. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Society of American Law Teachers, the Board of Visitors of the
C. U. N.Y. Law School, and the Board of Directors of the ACLU. Dalton is the author of AIDS and the Law (1987), AIDS Law Today (1993), and Racial Healing (1995).
ANTHONY PAUL FARLEY received his B. A. in philosophy at the University of Virginia and his J. D. at Harvard University. A former Assistant U. S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Farley currently teaches Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, and Postmodern Legal Theory as an assistant professor at the Boston College of Law. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Society of American Law Teachers and conducts a reading group for individuals convicted of various infractions in Dorchester. The class acts as an alternative to probation and culminates in a party with the judges, probation officers, alumni of the program, and the probationers’ families.
HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., is the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of Humanities and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University. He is Chairman of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Harvard, as well as a professor in the English department. He has also been a professor of English and literature at Duke, Yale, and Cornell universities. Professor Gates serves on many professional associations and committees, including the Council of Foreign Relations, the American Civil Liberties Union National Advisory Council, the American Antiquarian Society, the TransAfrica Forum Scholars Council, and the Cultural Diversity Committee for the Lexington Public Schools. Gates’s books include The Signifying Monkey: Towards a Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (1988), for which he received the American Book Award; Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1992); Colored People (1994); and, most recently, Figures in Black.
A graduate of Morehouse College and Princeton University, EDDIE S. GLAUDE, JR., is currently an Assistant Professor of Religion and African Studies at Bowdoin College. He is presently working on two major projects: an extended examination of the use of nation language in the political lives of African Americans and an edited volume on black nationalism in the United States. He is also coauthor of the forthcoming book Post-Afrocentric Nationalism: Essays on Pragmatism and Race.
LUKE CHARLES HARRIS received his J. D. and his L. L.M. at Yale Law School and his Ph. D. in politics at Princeton. Assistant professor of American politics and constitutional law at Vassar College, Harris is a former law clerk to Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., and was a Ful — bright Scholar in England. Harris worked on the Anita Hill support team and was a spokesperson for African American Agenda 2000 in opposition to the Million Man March. Cowriter and Chief Consultant for Kathe Sandler’s award-winning documentary film on color consciousness in the African American community, A Question of Color, he is also the author of a series of path-breaking essays on affirmative action, including "Affirmative Action as Equalizing Opportunity: Challenging the Myth of Preferential Treatment" (with Ump Nauruan), in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, edited by Hug Lafollette (Oxford University Press, 1997). Harris is currently completing a book on group rights called The Meaning of Constitutional Difference: Group Rights in Postapartheid America.
A. LEON HIGGINBOTHAM, JR., is Chief Judge Emeritus of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Currently he is Public Service Professor of Jurisprudence at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and of counsel to Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He also serves as a commissioner of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Judge Higginbotham was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995, the highest civilian honor in the nation. His book In the Matter of Color remains one of the seminal works on race and American slavery. Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process is his most recent publication.
DARREN LENARD HUTCHINSON is an assistant professor of law at Southern Methodist University School of Law in Dallas, Texas. He teaches, among other courses, Critical Race Theory and Constitutional Law. He completed his B. A. at the University of Pennsylvania and his J. D. at Yale Law School. His most recent article, "Out Yet Unseen: A Racial Critique of Gay and Lesbian Legal Theory and Political Discourse," appears in the University of Connecticut Law Review. In
November 1997, Professor Hutchinson chaired a panel at the Yale Law School Critical Race Theory Conference to commemorate the Tenth Anniversary of Critical Race Theory.
EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON is a widely published author who has developed graduate research projects in history and social studies at Cornell University’s Africana Studies Center. He also lectures at major universities throughout the country. Hutchinson’s works include The Mugging of Black America, Blacks and Reds: Race and Class in Conflict 1919-1990; Betrayed: A History of Presidential Failure to Protect Black Lives; Beyond O. J.: Race, Sex, and Class Lessons for America; Black Fatherhood: The Guide to Male Parenting; Black Fatherhood II: Black Women Talk about Their Men; The Assassination of the Black Male Image; and the forthcoming book The Crisis in Black and Black.
CHARLES R. LAWRENCE III is a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, where his teaching focuses on constitutional law, race, and hate speech. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is We Won’t Go Back: Making the Case for Affirmative Action (1997), which was coauthored by Georgetown Law professor Mari Matsuda. Among other honors, he has been awarded the National Black Law Students Association’s Paul Robeson Service Award and the W. K. Kellog Foundation National Fellowship. He is also a member of the board of advisers and past president of the Society of American Law Teachers.
DWIGHT A. McBRIDE is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. He completed his B. A. at Princeton University and his M. A. and Ph. D. in English at UCLA. His essays in the areas of race theory and black cultural studies appear in the Harvard Blackletter Law Journal and Modern Fiction Studies. Currently he is at work on a book — length study of abolitionist discourse in Britain, France, and the United States; he is also coediting a collection of essays on the Bible and progressive politics and editing a collection of essays on James Baldwin.
B. E. MYERS is a critic and photographer who specializes in the popular representations of Blacks in twentieth-century visual culture. He is currently a candidate for the Ph. D. in American intellectual history at UCLA and has recently completed the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program. Myers exhibits artwork in New York and Los Angeles and has taught seminars in critical studies at Cal Arts, as well as seminars in history and critical theory at UCLA. Recently Myers contributed a collaborative work to the Guggenheim Museum exhibition catalog entitled Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose: Gender Performance in Photography, and he has articles forthcoming in Gendered Visions (Cornell University) and FRAME-WORK (Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies). Myers is currently pursuing work in commercial photography and media consulting.
CHARLES I. NERO received his Ph. D. in Speech Communication and Afro-American Studies from Indiana University, his M. A. from Wake Forest University, and his B. A. from Xavier University. He has taught at Valdosta State College, Indiana University, and Ithaca College and is currently teaching at Bates College in the Department of Theater and Rhetoric and in the Programs for African American and American Cultural Studies. Nero has published in several journals and anthologies, including Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men, the Howard Journal of Communications, Black Women in America, and Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity, and Communication. Nero is currently finishing a book on African American gay literature and a monograph about opera and white supremacy in film.
HUEY P. NEWTON was the founder and chief theoretician of the Black Panther Party. He received his Ph. D. in the history of political consciousness from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of four books, including Revolutionary Suicide and the recently released War against the Panthers. His arrest in 1967 propelled the Black Panther Party into the international arena. Newton died in 1988.
ISHMAEL REED teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught at Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, and the University of the Antilles in Martinique. Author of fifteen books, he is a novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist. He is also a publisher, television producer, editor of magazines and anthologies, and radio and television commentator. His book of poetry, Conjure, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He is a founder of the Before
Columbus Foundation, which annually presents the American Book Awards; the Oakland Chapter of PEN; and There City Cinema, an organization that furthers the distribution and discussion of film throughout the world. He is published in, among other venues, the Yale Review, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Newsday.
MARLON T. RIGGS was an award-winning filmmaker, producer, director, and writer. His first major film, Ethnic Notions (1987), received a National Emmy Award, and his subsequent works, including Tongues Untied (1989), Affirmations (1990), and Anthem (1991), were awarded such honors as a blue ribbon in the American Film and Video Festival and Best Video in the New York Documentary Festival. Riggs was also honored with the 1992 Erik Barnouw Award and the International Documentary Association’s Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award for his feature-length documentary, Color Adjustment (1991). In 1992, Riggs’s Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret) received the Best "Black Experience" Film/Video award at the Eighth Annual Black International Cinema Festival and was named Best Cultural Affairs Documentary by the National Black Programming Consortium’s Prized Pieces Festival. In 1994, Marlon Riggs died of AIDS-related complications. His production team completed his final film, Black is. . . Black Ain’t, which he was working on at the time.
RON SIMMONS, PH. D., has been a free-lance writer, photographer, and media producer for more than twenty years. He was a cast member, still photographer, and the Washington, D. C., field producer for the award-winning film Tongues Untied and has produced New Directions for the Black Church, Hunger in the Nation’s Capital, Think: Howard, and NCBLG: The First Decade. Simmons is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Radio, TV, and Film at Howard University.
RONALD S. SULLIVAN, JR., is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Morehouse College and Harvard Law School. He has worked on a Kenyan committee charged with drafting a new constitution and as a Washington, D. C., public defender. Currently, Mr. Sullivan is in private practice with a Washington, D. C., law firm and teaches Appellate Advocacy at Howard Law School. Mr. Sullivan is the author of A License to Search: The Plain Feel Exception under Minnesota v. Dickerson and is working on an article on the implications of black nationalism on constitutional decision making.
CORNEL WEST is a professor of religion and Afro-American Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of the best-selling book Race Matters, as well as many other books, including Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin, Restoring Hope, Keeping the Faith: Philosophy and Race in America, Beyond Eurocentricism and Multiculturalism, and the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History (coedited with Jack Salz — man and David Lionel Smith). His latest work is the forthcoming book Born without Skin.
[1] AM RUMMAGING through a box of mementos, looking for my dog-eared copy of Martin Luther King’s "Why We Can’t Wait." I want to draw from it for the challenging task of introducing a series of essays written by Black men on gender and sexuality. A button catches my eye, "Integrate Now!" it demands. I warm to the memory of just how this simple demand has captured in its anachronism the very critique of a post-segregation liberal institution. As Harvard Law students in 1981, we proudly wore these buttons, recognizing that the sting of the message lay in the recovery of a demand that seemed out of place and out of time when set against an institution of higher learning years after the official barriers had dissolved. A demand so simple seemed to say so much. It occurs to me that "Integrate Now!" still captures the simple yet challenging task of articulating within Black community practices the plain fact that all African Americans, male or female and gay or straight should be at the center. As I chuckle at the fantasy of prominent Black men marching on them-
[2] Black women are "already liberated."
[3] "Racism is the primary (or only) oppression Black women
[4] speak for the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of men who live and die in the shadows of secrets, unable to speak of the love that helps them endure and contribute to the race. Their ordi-