Clark Hill’s Chicago Office to Host National Bar Association’s Prestigious Heman Sweatt Awards Reception April 20, 2018
CHICAGO, IL – Clark Hill’s Chicago office will host the National Bar Association’s (NBA) Heman Sweatt Awards Reception during the NBA’s 38th Annual Mid-Year Conference on April 20, 2018 from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. The event will honor persons who have demonstrated accomplishments in the arena of civil rights. Reginald M. Turner, a Member of Clark Hill’s Executive Committee and a Past President of the NBA, will present the honorees with their respective awards.
Heman Sweatt was a pioneering plaintiff in the famous Sweatt v. Painter United States Supreme Court case. Mr. Sweatt, an African American, had been denied admission to the University of Texas law school. Finding that separate but equal law school education was not available, the Supreme Court found that he could not be refused admission based on his race and he was admitted. This case was an important precursor to the Supreme Court’s later decision barring separate but equal school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education.
The honorees include: Justice Cynthia Cobbs-Judge, a circuit court judge in the First District of the Illinois Appellate Court in Chicago; Melody Spann-Cooper, Chairman of Midway Broadcasting Corporation, a best-in-class African-American owned media boutique whose properties include radio and interactive platforms, including the historic WVON; Kim Foxx, the Cook County State’s Attorney; Victor Henderson, a well-known civil and criminal trial lawyer who is the principal of the law firm of Henderson Parks; Anne Fredd, a highly regarded attorney specializing in municipal and construction matters with the law firm of Neal & Leroy; and Randolph Stone, a former Cook County Public Defender, who currently serves as a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Chicago and directs the Criminal & Juvenile Justice Project Clinic at the law school.
The NBA was conceived on August 1, 1925 and by 1945 it consisted of nearly 250 members.The NBA is the oldest and largest national organization of attorneys and judges of color, representing over 66,000 attorneys and judges, law students and legal scholars worldwide. The NBA’s mission is to work in a bipartisan manner to implement substantive changes that will protect constitutional rights and improve the political, civil and economic circumstances of all Americans, regardless of race, sex or creed.
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