On November 21, 2014, the University of Kentucky College of Law hosted the James and Mary Lassiter Distinguished Visiting Professor Conference. Anthony Paul Farley, the 2014 Lassiter Distinguished Visiting Professor, led a group of prominent speakers through the day's events.

The Lassiter Distinguished Visiting Professor conference focused on the four freedoms and race. Black childhood is in danger. What is freedom of speech without the right to an education? What is freedom of worship amidst nihilistic erasures of black childhood? What is freedom from want when most of black childhood is lived below the poverty line? What is freedom from fear when black childhood is itself feared? Democracy requires these questions to be answered, and childhood’s relationship to time means that there is such a thing as too late. As academics and activists from all over the nation, we gather together to address these urgent questions of race, childhood, and democracy.

The panel on Black Childhood and Fear included the following speakers:

Moving from a Culture of Predation to a Culture of Protection of Black and other Non-White Youth

Margalynne Armstrong, Santa Clara University School of Law

The Consequences of Inequality for Children in the United States

Laura Nyantung Beny, University of Michigan Law School

Social Scare: How Social Media is Influencing the Development & Safety of Our Children

Nicky A. Boothe-Perry, Florida A&M University School of Law

How the St. Louis County Municipal Court System Made the #Ferguson Rebellion Inevitable

Maggie Ellinger-Locke, Attorney at Law

Worse Than Death: Parental Incarceration & The Drug War

Michele Goodwin, University of California at Irvine, School of Law

Moderator: Melynda Price, University of Kentucky College of Law