The Haywood Burns/Shanara Gilbert Award
Leonard M. Baynes (*)
I. Introduction
In 1996, the Planning Committee for the First Annual Northeastern People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference(1) had asked Professor Haywood Burns of City University of New York (CUNY) Law School to serve as moderator of a panel focusing on the relationship between, and the various roles of, lawyers, judges, and law faculty of color. Several days before the Conference, Professor Burns left a message on my answering machine apologizing for canceling his commitment,(2) stating that he was called by President Nelson Mandela to do more work on the South African Constitution, and that "he owed me one for reneging on his commitment." Tragically, Professor Burns, along with Professor Shanara Gilbert, also of CUNY Law School, was killed in a car accident during this trip to South Africa. After I heard of the deaths of Professors Burns and Gilbert, I thought how strange life is. If Professor Burns had attended the conference instead of going to South Africa maybe he would have been alive today. I also thought that Professor Burns did not "owe me one," but we, as a people of color, owe Professor Burns one for dedicating his life for the advancement of people of color.
I, unfortunately, was not personally acquainted with either Professor Burns or Gilbert, but I admired their activism from afar. Given both of their activist biographies, it is more than understandable why both of them chose to go to South Africa where they could bring about real change rather than attend a conference where they would merely be discussing how to bring about the change. And if there is a good way to die, it would be to die while doing something that you believe in.
In planning this year's Conference, the Planning Committee wanted to pay tribute to Professors Haywood Burns and Shanara Gilbert in some way. In order to honor their memory, we decided to name an award in their honor and distribute the award each year to a law professor. This year, the Planning Committee decided to present the award to Professor Cruz Reynoso of UCLA Law School, and Professor Adrien Katherine Wing of the University of Iowa Law School.
This essay discusses the biographies of Professors Haywood Burns and Shanara Gilbert. The essay then discusses the criteria for creating the award, and finally it discusses how the lives of this year's award recipients meet the criteria.
II. The Biographies of Two Activitists
A. Professor Haywood Burns
At the age of fifteen, Haywood Burns showed his mettle as an activist when he successfully integrated a swimming pool in Peekskill, New York.(3) Professor Burns graduated from Harvard College with honors and Yale University Law School.(4) He went to work for the prestigious firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and clerked for the Honorable Constance Baker Motley of the United States District Court.(5)
Professor Burns' commitment to social activism was demonstrated by some of the public interest jobs he held after his clerkship. He became assistant counsel to the NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund, Inc.(6) He served as general counsel to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign. He formed the National Conference of Black Lawyers in 1969, which served as "the legal arm of the black revolution."(7) This group represented the Black Panthers, Vietnam War resisters, and the Cornell University students who staged an armed occupation of the student union building.(8) Professor Burns also successfully defended Angela Davis, who was acquitted of kidnapping and murder charges; in 1970 Davis invaded a San Rafael, California, courthouse in an attempt to free black prisoners.(9)
In 1974, Professor Burns started his academic career; he became a visiting professor at State University of New York at Buffalo. Nevertheless, he continued to be active in social causes and acted as the coordinator for the defense of sixty-two inmates indicted in the Attica prison uprising, during which more than forty persons died.(10) In 1975, Professor Burns returned to New York City as an associate professor at New York University, before becoming Chair of the Urban Legal Studies Program at City College and Vice Provost and Dean for urban and legal programs.(11) In 1987, Professor Burns was named Dean of CUNY Law School, becoming the first Black dean at a law school in New York.(12)
B. Shanara Gilbert
M. Shanara Gilbert was an Associate Professor of Law at the CUNY Law School. She graduated from Syracuse University with a major in political journalism and received her juris doctor from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980. Like Haywood Burns, she exhibited a passion for public service and worked tirelessly in the interest of equity and justice. After graduating from law school, she worked as a staff attorney with the District of Columbia Public Defender Service and the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services. She was founder and co-director of the CUNY Law School's Defender Clinic, a member of the board of directors of the National Conference of Black Lawyers and past chair of the Conference's Section on Criminal Justice. She was also on the advisory board of the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem. In 1993, as a consultant, she wrote a report on the status of university legal aid clinics in South Africa.
III. The Criteria(13) for the Haywood Burns/Shanara Gilbert Award
The Haywood Burns/Shanara Gilbert Award is given to a law professor who has demonstrated the same values, courage, and civic commitment that our esteemed deceased colleagues exemplified throughout their lives. The recipients of the award have consistently demonstrated the following qualities:
1. Activist Teacher-Scholar: The recipient shall have demonstrated, through his or her work within the legal academy, a sustained commitment to the advancement of the legal, social, and economic position of People of Color in our society.
2. Activist Lawyer: The recipient shall have demonstrated, through his or her participation in the civic life of the community outside the legal academy, a sustained role of leadership that advances and protects the legal, social, and economic position of People of Color in our Nation.
The recipient of the Haywood Burns/Shanara Gilbert Award shall have displayed such exemplary activist work as a teacher, scholar, and lawyer despite great personal sacrifice. He or she shall not have feared taking stands on racial, ethnic, or class issues that are controversial or unpopular inside or outside their communities.
Last, and perhaps most important, the recipient of the Haywood Burns/Shanara Gilbert Award shall be awarded to the person who best demonstrates, above all else, a sustained and abiding love for the people who he or she serves so well.
This year it gives the Planning Committee a great deal of honor to award the Haywood Burns/Shanara Gilbert Award to Professor Cruz Reynoso of UCLA Law School, and Professor Adrien Katherine Wing of the University of Iowa Law School.
IV. The Biographies of the Award Recipients
A. Professor Cruz Reynoso(14)
Professor Cruz Reynoso received his associate degree from Fullerton Junior College, his bachelor degree from Pomona College, and his law degree from University of California School of Law at Berkeley. He started his legal career as a legal assistant to State Senator William Beard and also went into practice in his own law firm. But public service called; he served in four high-powered government positions: (1) the Assistant Chief, Division of Fair Employment Practices in the Department of Industrial Relations, (2) Staff Secretary to Governor Edmund G. Brown, (3) Associate General Counsel, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and (4) Director of California Rural Legal Assistance.
Professor Reynoso started his academic career at the University of New Mexico. But public service intervened again when he started his judicial career. He became Associate Justice of the California Third Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1982, Governor Jerry Brown appointed Professor Reynoso to the position of Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. Along with two other justices,(15) he was recalled by California voters because of his stance against the death penalty in 1986.(16) Professor Reynoso resumed his academic career in 1991 as a Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. At the time of the Conference, Professor Reynoso was a visiting Professor of law at the University of Miami Law School. He also serves as Vice Chair of the United States Civil Rights Commission.
The Planning Committee decided to award the Haywood Burns/Shanara Gilbert Award to Professor Cruz Reynoso because we believe that he represents the qualities that were exemplified by both Haywood Burns and Shanara Gilbert. Even a cursory glance at Professor Reynoso's resume demonstrates that he has been an activist--both as a teacher-scholar and a lawyer. He also has taken unpopular stands on major issues affecting people of color, like the death penalty. This courageous stand for principle caused him to lose his judgeship on the California Supreme Court.
B. Professor Adrien Katherine Wing
Professor Adrien Katherine Wing received her bachelors degree with high honors from Princeton University, where she was awarded the Frederick Douglass Prize and the Afro-American Studies Thesis Prize Honorable Mention. She earned her masters degree from UCLA in African Studies, where she specialized in southern Africa and was an editor of UFAHAMU journal.(17) She earned her law degree from Stanford University Law School. At Stanford, Professor Wing served on the National Board of Black American Law Students Association (BALSA) as the Southern Africa Task Force Chairperson, and she was an editor of the Stanford Journal of International Law.
Professor Wing began her legal career as an international attorney at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle in New York, where she worked for four years. She then joined the New York firm of Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman where Professor Haywood Burns was "Of Counsel."
Professor Wing has been a life-long activist. She served as the International Section Chair of the National Conference of Black Lawyers. She also served as the National Conference of Black Lawyers' representative at the United Nations, as well as the International Association of Democratic Lawyers United Nations representative to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Funds (UNICEF). In 1994, she co-organized the National Conference of Black Lawyers delegation to observe the South African elections and organized and participated in similar delegations to Angola, Grenada, Ghana, Jordan, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Sudan, England, Nicaragua, Israel, Egypt, and Palestine.
Professor Wing also served as a consultant for four years to the African National Congress Constitutional Committee in the period leading up to the passage of the interim constitution. In 1996, she was hired by the United States Agency for International Development to assist the newly elected Palestinian Legislative Council with the drafting of autonomous Palestine's first constitution.
Professor Wing is currently serving as a consultant for a life-skills curriculum--the Amer-I-Can Program, owned by football Hall of Famer, actor, and activist Jim Brown. Professor Wing introduced the program in Iowa and New Orleans.
Professor Wing is also an activist in the classroom. She teaches Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Feminism, Constitutional Law, Race, Racism & American Law, Comparative Law, and Comparative Constitutional Law. She is the author of more than thirty-five publications, and she is the editor of the recently published Critical Race Feminism: A Reader, from New York University Press.(18)
The Planning Committee decided to award the Haywood Burns/Shanara Gilbert Award to Professor Adrien Katherine Wing because we believe that she also represents the qualities that were exemplified by both Haywood Burns and Shanara Gilbert. A cursory glance at Professor Wing's resume demonstrates that she has been an activist--both as a teacher-scholar and a lawyer. She also has taken unpopular stands on major issues affecting people of color, despite great personal sacrifice.
V. Conclusion
On behalf of the Planning Committee for the Second Annual People of Color Conference, it has been a great honor to pay tribute to two fallen heros in our Northeastern Region--Professors Haywood Burns and Shanara Gilbert, by creating an award in their honor that will be given to those that we feel exemplify their work on Earth. We hope to make this award on an annual basis in order to keep their memories alive.
It also gives me great pleasure to recognize the contributions made to people of color by two law professors who have spent their careers as activist teacher-scholars and lawyers. It gave the committee a great deal of honor to give the 1997 Haywood Burns/Shanara Gilbert Award to Professors Cruz Reynoso and Adrien Katherine Wing. We applaud their efforts and join them in their activism.
* Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law, Springfield, Massachusetts; B.S., New York University, 1979; J.D., Columbia University, 1982; M.B.A., Columbia University, 1983. Very special thanks to Professor Robert V. Ward, Jr. for inviting me to write this tribute and essay describing the Haywood Burns/Shanara Gilbert Award for this symposium issue of the New England Law Review. Special thanks to the other members of the planning committee for the Second Annual People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference, who made the conference special: Larry Cata Backer, Carlos Cuevas, Leslie G. Espinoza, Deborah Waire Post, Victor C. Romero, Beverly McQueary Smith, and Robert V. Ward, Jr. Special thanks to the New England School of Law for hosting this Conference.
1. The first Conference took place at Western New England College School of Law in Springfield, Massachusetts, in October 1996.
2. Fortunately Renee Landers, the deputy general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services agreed to serve as moderator at the last minute.
3. See Karen W. Arenson, W. Haywood Burns, 55, Dies; Law Dean and Rights Worker, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 4, 1996, at D21.
9. Arenson, supra note 3, at D21.
13. The criteria was initially drafted by Professor Larry Cata Backer of the University of Tulsa College of Law and me, and then approved by the other members of the Planning Committee.
14. Last year, the Planning Committee invited Professor Reynoso to be one of our keynote speakers, but because of his heavy schedule and the fact that he came to the east coast once a month for his duties before the Civil Rights Commission, he declined. After last year's Conference was completed, the first person that I called to ask to be keynote speaker at this year's Conference was Professor Reynoso. We organized the date of the Conference in order to accommodate Professor Reynoso's schedule.
15. The press focused most of its attention on the recall of Chief Justice Rose Bird, the first woman California state supreme court chief justice. See Joel Sappell, Death Penalty Controversy Trails Bird, L.A. TIMES, May 14, 1990, at 1. But Professor Reynoso was recalled along with Associate Justice Joseph R. Grodin. See Philip Hager, Justice Prevails Cruz Reynoso Was Swept off the State Supreme Court with Rose Bird, But Now He's Found New Causes and a New Career, L.A. TIMES, Aug. 13, 1989, at 18; Sheryl Stolberg, Politics and the Judiciary Coexist, But Often Uneasily; Judges: Fundraising and Accountability to the Electorate Create Tension, L.A. Times, Mar. 21, 1992, at A1.
16. See Ex-Justice Reynoso Still Active With Law, SACRAMENTO BEE, Mar. 16, 1997, at A3.
17. "UFAHAMU" is a Swahili word that means "understanding."
18. See generally CRITICAL RACE FEMINISM: A READER (Adrien Katherine Wing ed., 1997).