Constitution Day Lecture at the Byrd Center

12th Annual Tom E. Moses Lecture to address ​Policy Making and Mass Incarceration in America.

On Tuesday evening September 20, Elizabeth Hinton, Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies at Harvard University will deliver the twelfth annual Tom E. Moses Memorial Lecture on the U.S. Constitution in the Byrd Center auditorium.  The Byrd Center is proud to welcome Professor Hinton, whose talk will focus on the policy origins of America’s War on Crime and the roots of today’s mass incarceration crisis, which has left the United States with the world’s largest prison population.

​With one in in every thirty-one adults in America currently under some form of penal control, including one in eleven African American men, the public concern over mass incarceration has been fueled by groundbreaking works like Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow as well as the Black Lives Matter movement and grown significantly in the past decade.  But whereas the Reagan administration’s War on Drugs has frequently been identified as the source of the current crisis, Professor Hinton traces its roots farther back to the liberal social welfare programs of the Johnson era and the 1965 Law Enforcement Assistance Act that authorized the federal government to militarize local police forces across the country.  Successive presidents later decreased funding for welfare programs and increased funding for anti-crime measures that established law enforcement measures in public schools and public housing, increased police surveillance in local neighborhoods, and incentivized the construction of new prisons.

​Professor Hinton’s talk will be based on her recently published book From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime:  The Making of Mass Incarceration in America.  A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice for 2016, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime has been described as “superb, “outstanding,” “clear-eyed and timely,” and “a revelation.”  Hinton has penned numerous essays, articles, and op-eds which have appeared in the L.A. Times, Washington Post, and New York Times and spoken widely on the subject of mass incarceration in its historical and present contexts.

​In covering this critically important subject, this year’s lecture will correspond closely with Shepherd University’s Common Reading selection, Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy.   A book signing coordinated by Shepherdstown’s Four Seasons Books and a reception sponsored by the Shepherd University Common Reading Program will follow the lecture.
 
The Moses Memorial Lecture is named for the late Tom E. Moses, a longtime civil libertarian, activist, and founder of the Eastern Panhandle branch of the ACLU-WV.  The lecture will begin at 7:00 P.M. on Tuesday, September 20, 2016 in the auditorium of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education on the campus of Shepherd University.   Doors will open at 6:30 P.M.  The Byrd Center is located at 213 N. King St., Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, WV 25443.
 
Admission is free and open to the public, but due to limited space advance reservations will be required.  Persons interested in reserving seats should call Mr. Jody Brumage at (304) 876-5648 or email him at jbrumage@shepherd.edu. Reservations may also be made at the Byrd Center Office Monday thru Friday, 9am to 4pm.  Remaining seats will be available at the door on a first-come-first-served basis on the night of the lecture.