from the Altadena Library District
You are invited to see a filmed reenactment of the oral arguments for Brown v. Board of Education at a program at Altadena Library on Saturday, February 23 beginning at 2 PM. The Honorable Terry J. Hatter, Jr., Senior United States District Judge (Chief Judge Emeritus) Central District of California, will appear in person to introduce this important event. In the video Hatter presents his views of the case and its effect on his own life. Other speakers in the film include Cheryl Brown Henderson, who describes how her father, Oliver Brown, became the named plaintiff, and Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Irvine School of Law, who gives a background of the events leading up to the case and its aftermath.
Brown v. Board of Education was a United States Supreme Court Case (1954) in which the Court declared state laws of separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional and overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state-sponsored segregation with its standard of “separate but equal.”
This riveting presentation which features actual lawyers and judges arguing the case was originally given in 2011 as part of the Justice John G. Gabbert Historical Oral Argument and Lecture series presided by Justice Manuel A. Ramirez, Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, Division Two.
Speaking about this historic reenactment Justice Hatter had this to say, “Brown v. Board was the jumping off point of the civil rights movement." Hatter added the Brown ruling, in terms of jurisprudence, was not Warren's best-written decision. "But in terms of moral responsibility for this nation, it has no match."
Judge Hatter, a third generation lawyer, is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School; his undergraduate degree is from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He has served as a United States District Judge for the Central District of California since his appointment in December, 1979. On March l, 1998, he became the Chief Judge of the Central District, which is the largest federal district in the nation, serving some 18 million people. Prior to his appointment to the federal bench, Judge Hatter sat on the California Superior Court for Los Angeles County. He served as a Special Assistant and Executive Assistant to Mayor Tom Bradley, directing Urban Development and Criminal Justice Planning for the City of Los Angeles. He has been a professor of law at Loyola Law School and at the University of Southern California Law School and has served as the Executive Director of the Western Center on Law and Poverty.
This free program is sponsored by the Friends of the Altadena Library. The main Altadena Library is located at 600 East Mariposa Street, Altadena, CA 91001. For more information please call 626-798-0833 or visit the library on the web at http://www.altadenalibrary.org.
