Dr. Donald F. Tibbs came to Drexel from the Southern University Law Center, where he
was an assistant professor of law and director of the Institute for Civil Rights and
Justice. Previously he served as adjunct faculty at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ,
in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry and the Department of African American
Studies. In both departments he taught a variety of courses on race and the law,
including Critical Race Theory; Stereotypes, Prejudice and the Law; Law and Racial
Identity Resistance; and seminars on both the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement. He
also taught at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and Winthrop University and
guest lectured on race and law at the University of Wisconsin, California State
University-Long Beach, and in numerous courses at Arizona State University. 

Dr. Tibbs received his Juris Doctorate (J.D) in 1996 from the University of Pittsburgh
School of Law. Following law school he worked as a civil rights attorney in Charlotte,
North Carolina. In 1998, he returned to academics to pursue his Doctor of Philosophy
(Ph.D.) from Arizona State University in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry where
he emphasized race and law in legal history. At Arizona State University he was a
Graduate College Academic Support Fellow (GCASF), a Preparing Future Faculty Fellow
(PFF), and named the Arizona State University 2001 Sheila S. Skipper Outstanding Graduate
Student. His doctoral dissertation entitled “Black Power and Prison Power: The Prisoner
Union Movement in North Carolina, 1967-1979,” is a narrative legal history tracing the
roots of black power behind prison walls to the establishment of the North Carolina
Prisoners’ Labor Union. The subject of his work is most noted as a narrative history of
the Supreme Court case, Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners Labor Union, Inc., 433 U.S. 119
(1977). 

Following his doctoral studies., Dr. Tibbs served twice as an academic fellow at the
University of Wisconsin Law School. He was a fellow at the J. Willard Hurst Summer
Institute in Legal History, where he presented research on the Black Power Movement in
legal history, and a William H. Hastie Law Teaching Fellow where he completed his
Master’s of Laws (LL.M.) degree. While a Hastie Fellow, Dr. Tibbs conducted an
ethnographical study of the Inmate Disciplinary Process at the Fox Lake Prison – a medium
security prison located in Fox Lake, Wisconsin. Titled, “Inmate Discipline in Wisconsin:
How Law “Works” Behind Prison Walls,” his study reconstructed how non-lawyers understand
and make use of the intersection of law, power, and resistance during the process of
punishing those already being punished. Most recently he was named the 2007-2008 Harry S.
Golden Civil Rights Research Fellow at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. 

Dr. Tibbs’s research interests include Civil Rights/Black Power Legal History; Law and
Liberation; Critical Race Theory; Race and Punishment; and the 4th Amendment. He is a
published scholar with articles appearing in the Southern California Interdisciplinary
Law Journal, the Seattle Journal for Social Justice; the African American National
Biography (Oxford University Press 2008), and the Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court. His
works in progress include two articles on race and law during the Black Power Movement,
and a book manuscript, tentatively titled “Black Power, Prison Power: Legal Consciousness
and the Prisoner Union Movement,” projected for completion in 2009. 

Dr. Tibbs’ expertise focuses on the overlapping issues of law, civil rights, criminal
procedure, and race and punishment.

Articles

PDF

The Jena Six and Black Punishment: Law and Raw Life in the Domain of Non-Existence, Seattle Journal for Social Justice (2008)
This article examines the case of the Jena 6 as a barometer of racial justice...
 

PDF

Peeking Behind the Iron Curtain: How Law ‘Works’ Behind Prison Walls, Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal (2006)
 

Books

BLACK POWER, PRISON POWER: Race, Radicalism, and Rights in Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union (2009)
On Thursday, June 23, 1977, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Jones v. North...