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Chester Davenport |
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s
landmark Brown v. Topeka Board
of Education decision, the School of Law will host a program
on April 7 to reflect on the past, evaluate the present and discuss
the future of educational integration, specifically at the UGA law
school.
UGA’s first African-American law graduate will deliver the
97th Sibley Lecture at 3:30 p.m. in the Chapel. A 1966 graduate
of the law school, Chester C. Davenport is currently the managing
director of Georgetown Partners, a private merchant-banking firm
based in Bethesda, Md.
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Sharon Tucker |
Prior to founding Georgetown Partners in 1988, he was the chairman
of GTE Consumer Services, a cellular company, and Envirotest Systems
Corporation, the world’s leading provider of auto emissions
testing services. He served as assistant secretary of transportation
for policy and international affairs from 1977 to 1979 during the
Carter administration.
A panel discussion with prominent African Americans who have a connection
to the law school follows. In addition to Davenport, the panelists
are Georgia Supreme Court Justice Robert Benham, UGA’s second
African-American law graduate and the first African American to
serve on Georgia’s Supreme Court; current third-year law student
Francys Johnson; Sharon “Nyota” Tucker, the first African-American
female law graduate at UGA and now an assistant professor at Albany
State University; and U.S. District Court Senior Judge Horace T.
Ward, the first African American to seek admission to UGA’s
law school. Law school associate professor Larry Blount will moderate
the panel discussion.
Concluding the day’s program will be a commemorative dinner
featuring Tucker as the keynote speaker. Prior to becoming a professor,
Tucker worked at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in San Francisco and
Georgia Legal Services in Albany, and served as an attorney in private
practice. In 1991, she was selected as a Fulbright-Hays Fellow and
traveled to southern Africa to study social and economic changes
in that region of the world.
The dinner will be held at the Holiday Inn downtown and is open
to the public. For cost and reservations, contact Lisa C. Mathis
at 542-7959.
The Brown v. Board of Education
program is sponsored by the Charles Loridans Foundation of Atlanta
in tribute to the late John A. Sibley, a 1911 graduate of the law
school.
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