Symposium Booklet

Reparations: Its Past, Present, & Immediate Future

April 19, 2024

10:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Berkeley Law

Celebrating 30 years of JBLP

Symposium Hosts: Alexis Tatum & Dominick Williams

Symposium Panels

This symposium brings together leading academics and practitioners to explore the landscape of both California and the nation’s work to bring about reparations for Black Americans, highlight the work of California’s Reparations Task Force, and consider various issues and angles on the topic that may provide some remedy to Black Americans in the United States.

Keynote 1: The History of Reparations

This presentation will give an overview of the reparations movement in the U.S. and California, highlighting the ongoing movement for reparations for descendants of slavery despite seemingly sufficient, prophylactic legislation post-slavery (Civil Rights Act of 1866; 1964, Housing Rights Act of 1964; Voting Rights Act of 1865, etc.). It will discuss the concept of "naive faith in bare law" as espoused by WEB Du Bois in The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America, and his appeal to make Freedmens Bureau a permanent institution.

Panel 1: Reparations Now: Moving Beyond a Naive Faith in Bare Law

This panel will bridge us from the history of reparations to where we stand contemporarily following the California Reparations Task Force and its final report, published in June 2023. Panelists will convey what the Task Force has revealed and how we can build on the Task Force's groundbreaking revelations

Keynote 2: Inequitable Music Industry Contracts and the Oppressive Hand of Copyright Law: the Case for Reparations for African American Artists and Performers

This presentation uses R &B pioneer Ruth Brown, a performer so prolific that Atlantic Records earned the moniker the "House That Ruth Built" as a case study, and critical race theory as a template, to outline the case for restorative justice for legacy Black music artists and performers.

Blak artists lost the opportunity for generational wealth arising from inequitable music industry contracts and practices. This presentation will also detail the ways in which copyright law doctrines including the compulsory license, copyright formalities and harsh judicial standards facilitated the loss of generational wealth for Black artists and performers

Panel 2: The Future of Reparations

This panel will discuss the future of reparations and think imaginatively about what our next steps should be. Now that we know what history has wrought and what opportunities lay in our wake, how do we begin to tackle creatively the gaping chasm between what Black Americans have and what we are owed? Panelists will share how we can begin to think about such an important question.

Symposium Speakers

Kamila V. Moore, Esq.

Kamilah Moore is a reparatory justice scholar and an attorney specializing in entertainment and intellectual property law. While studying abroad at the University of Amsterdam, Moore wrote a master’s thesis exploring international law and reparatory justice for victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, and their legacies She earned a J D from Columbia Law School, a Master of Laws in International Criminal Law from the University of Amsterdam, and a Bachelor's degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Moore was appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to the California Reparations Task Force in 2021.

Brandon Greene is the Director of Policy Advocacy for the Western Center on Law and Poverty (WCLP) Previously, he was the Director of the Racial and Economic Justice Program at the ACLU of Northern California, the Manager of the the Civic Design Lab in Oakland and an attorney and clinical supervisor at the East Bay Community Law Center. Brandon is a graduate of Boston University Law School, where he was a public interest scholar and Martin Luther King Social Justice Fellow

Don Tamaki is a Senior Counsel at Minami Tamaki LLP He earned both his B A and J.D. from UC Berkeley. He co-founded the Asian Law Alliance in San Jose, and served as the Executive Director of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco In the 1980’s, he was a member of the pro bono legal team that reopened the landmark 1944 Supreme Court case Korematsu v United States In 2021, he was appointed to serve on the nine-member California Reparations Task Force. He is the recipient of the ABA Spirit of Excellence Award (2020), the National Asian Pacific Bar Association Trailblazer Award (2003), and the State Bar of California Loren Miller Award (1987)

Past Chair, California Reparations Task Force

Brandon L. Greene

Director of Policy Advocacy, WCLP

Donald Tamaki

Symposium Speakers

Kevin Greene

Professor Kevin “K J ” Greene is the John J Schumacher Chair and Professor Law at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. He is a nationally recognized entertainment and intellectual property law scholar and an expert witness consu for copyright, trademark, publicity rights, and entertainment contract disputes. particiular he has pioneered work on on African-American music and inequality copyright law Before becoming a law professor, Greene practiced law in New at Cravath, Swaine & Moore He later joined New York’s top entertainment boutique law firm Frankfurt, Kurnit, Klein & Selz Kevin is a graduate of State University of New York and Yale Law School

John J Schumacher Chair & Professor of Law, Southwestern Law School

Wesley Cox

Agency

Wesley has worked at the African American Community Service Agency since January 2022 as a Reparations Research fellow He is a San Francisco State alum who organized with the Afrikan Black Coalition Conference, the Black Student Union, and Black Residents United in Housing He pursued his Master's in AfricanAmerican Studies at UCLA, where he was a teaching assistant and Graduate Student Association representative for the academic senate He is pursuing his Ph D in Higher Education and Student Affairs at Claremont Graduate University and San Diego State University His dissertation is focused on Black LGBTQ+ students' perceptions of campus and sense of belonging. Cox is also an African American Studies educator and Fulbright South Africa GPA Scholar

Cameron D. Clark is a Supervising Attorney in Berkeley’s Policy Advocacy Clinic, pursuing legislative reforms to abolish administrative fines and fees imposed on youth who are involved in the criminal legal system. Cameron received their law degree from Harvard Law School, where they studied as a NAACP-LDF Earl Warren Scholar, a Harvard University Presidential Scholar, and managing editor of the Harvard Blackletter Law Journal Cameron received their B A in sociology with honors from the University of Texas at Austin A civil rights attorney by training, Cameron joined Berkeley Law following fellowships with the Southern Poverty Law Center in New Orleans and the Texas Civil Rights Project in Houston Cameron’s previous experiences also include litigation in California, working with Public Counsel and the ACLU of Southern California to support transgender prisoners and students asserting their civil rights

he/they

Clinical Supervising Attorney, Policy Advocacy Clinic, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law

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Cameron Clark

Symposium Speakers

Ndjuoh MehChu

Associate Professor of Law, Seton Hall Law School

Ndjuoh MehChu is an associate professor at Seton Hall Law School where he teaches and writes on Civil Rights, Critical Race Theory, and Torts Prior to joining the Seton Hall Law faculty, Ndjuoh was an inaugural Thurgood Marshall Law Teaching Fellow at Howard University School of Law. He was also a legal fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Jackson, Mississippi and clerked for the Honorable Jack B. Weinstein on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York Before law school, Ndjuoh was a special education and math teacher in the South Bronx. He holds a B.A. in Economics and Africana Studies from Rutgers University-New Brunswick with highest honors and a J D from the University of Chicago Law School. Ndjuoh serves on the Executive Board of the American Association of Law Schools Sections on Civil Rights Law and Children and the Law He also serves on the board of NJ LEEP.

Alexis Tatum is a 2L at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law She is JBLP's 2L Editor-in-Chief and a former Historian & Communications Co-Editor. Before law school, Alexis earned her Bachelor's degrees in Journalism and Plan II Honors, an interdisciplinary liberal arts honors program, at the University of Texas at Austin She is a first-generation college graduate and law student interested in the intersections of race and the right to privacy in the digital era.

Dominick Williams

he/him 2L Editor-in-Chief Senior Symosium Editor

Dominick Williams is a 2L at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law

He serves as JBLP's Co-Senior Symposium Editor and former 2L Editor-in-Chief. Before law school, he worked with California Secretary of State Shirley Weber as a liaison to the California Reparations Task Force. He also worked as thenAssemblymember Shirley Weber's legislative staffer focused on higher education, police accountability, and election issues. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the California Law Review

Alexis Tatum

Ber urnal of Black Law & Policy

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Th of Black Law & Policy (BJBLP) is committed to publishing works dedicated to addressing social, political, and economic issues affecting the Black diaspora while promoting the works of scholars of marginalized identities, activists, and attorneys. Topics include institutional racism, social, political, and economic inequality, and anti-Black racism.

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The Journal seeks to publish social policy and legal scholarship addressing economic, political, philosophic, and sociological issues affecting Black people.

As we see it, the challenge facing the Journal is threefold:

First, the Journal aims to disrupt the centering of whiteness in legal academia. We hope our journal will ultimately serve Black communities by infusing intellectual discourse with provocative and innovative scholarship, thus deepening thinking about policy options and choices.

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2023-24 Board of Editors

Editors-in-Chief

Alexis Tatum

Langston Glaude

Managing Editor

Kennedy Edwards Publishing Editors

Tiffaney Boyd

Leia Walker

History & Communications Editor

Alyssa Young Articles Editors*

Kennedy Hayes

Bailey Malveaux

Johnsenia Brooks*

Daija Chambers

Davanna Howell-Mcfarlane

Chinenye Sunny-Odio

Senior Articles Editor

Allonna Nordhavn

Senior Symposium Editor

Dominick Williams

Kaela Allen

Kyra Morris

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Danielle Dyson

Grace Oyenubi*

Abby Smith

*symposium committee

Lauren Campbell

Aaniyah Hicks

Metyia Phillips*

Filmore Thomas IV

Berkeley Journal of Black Law & Policy

Thank you! BJBLP is grateful to our wonderful panelists, guests, and sponsors for helping us host this event. Additionally, thank you to our student members for helping make this event and forthcoming publication come to life. Finally, thank you to our guests! We hope this symposium has inspired you to learn more about the work of our panelists. We look forward to sharing our Spring Volume 23 publication with you soon.

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