The author, Professor Donald Jones, was joined by Professor and Associate Dean Mario Barnes, co-director of the Center on Law, Equality, and Race at the University of California, Irvine School of Law; Professor Kenneth B. Nunn, associate director of the Center and Families and assistant director of the Criminal Justice Center at the University of Florida Levin College of Law; Tom Mesereau, the attorney who successfully defended Michael Jackson in a child molestation indictment in 2005, and Judge William H. “Billy” Murphy, Jr., founding partner Falcon Murphy who represents the family of Freddie Gray, the African-American who died in 2015 during an encounter with Baltimore police. Nancy Abudu, legal director of the ACLU of Florida, filled out the panel, which was moderated by Miami Law Professor Charlton Copeland.
Jones is the author of two other books: Race, Sex and Suspicion: The Myth of the Black Male (Praeger 2005); and Fear of a Hip-Hop Planet: America’s New Dilemma (2013). Jones’s work weaves together law, history, and human narratives to explore the gulf between formal equality and the social disadvantage people of color still experience in their lives.
