The Many Names of Slavery | March 23

Slavery in the nineteenth century. Convict labor and leasing in the twentieth. Mass incarceration in the twenty-first. Is there a throughline? The roots of today’s inequities in Texas can be traced to the state’s settlement by cotton farmers traveling west from the southern United States. Andrew J. Torget (March 2), Jay Jenkins (March 9), and Sandra Guerra Thompson (March 23) will guide us to a more informed and nuanced view of Texas history and the efforts to address and end persistent and corrosive race-based public policies. us to a more informed and nuanced view of Texas history and the efforts to address and end persistent and corrosive race-based public policies.

March 23: Sandra Guerra Thompson will present information about contemporary incarceration, including the demographics of jail populations, federal sentencing, forensic science, and wrongful convictions. She will also detail reform efforts toward more equitable sentencing. Ms. Thompson is the Newell H. Blakely Professor in Law and director of the Criminal Justice Institute at the University of Houston Law Center. She teaches criminal procedure, criminal law, prisoners’ rights, and prison reform. In 1996, Professor Thompson became the first Latina tenured law professor in Texas.