Beneath the Law? The Plight of African- Americans Since Jamestown Saturday, July 20 2019 | The Omni Homestead Resort | Hot Springs, VA CONTINUING Written Materials LEGAL EDUCATION A presentation of The Virginia Bar Association’s Committee on Special Issues of National & State Importance Beneath the Law? The Plight of African-Americans Since Jamestown PRESENTERS Michael R. Doucette Mike Doucette joined the Lynchburg Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office in 1984 as an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney and was the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Lynchburg from 2006 to 2017. He became the first Executive Director of the Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorneys (VACA) on January 15, 2018. Mike graduated in 1981 from the University of Connecticut and in 1984 from the Marshall/Wythe School of Law at the College of William & Mary. In 2003, Mike was honored by VACA with the Von Schuch Award as the outstanding assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney for the entire state. In 2005 and 2011, he received the Lynchburg Police Department’s Honorable Service Award. In 2011, Virginia’s Lawyer’s Weekly chose him as one of its 31 honorees for “Leader of the Law.” In 2014, he received the VACA’s Robert F. Horan Jr. Award as the outstanding Commonwealth’s Attorney for Virginia, and the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police President’s Award. In 2017, he received VACA’s Michael R. Doucette Award for Lecturers of Merit. Mike is a past president of VACA. He previously chaired the Protective Order subcommittee of the Governor’s Domestic Violence Prevention Advisory Board as well the Virginia Criminal Justice Services Board. He has served on the Virginia State Crime Commission, the Virginia Supreme Court’s Special Committee on Criminal Discovery Rules, the Virginia Criminal Justice Conference and as president of the board of directors for the Virginia Legal Aid Society. He serves on the Board of Governors of the Criminal Law Section of the Virginia State Bar and on the Virginia Supreme Court’s Model Jury Instruction Committee. For many years, Mike has been a frequent faculty member for the Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Services Council and the National College of District Attorneys. He is a Cold War veteran of the United States Air Force. He lives in Lynchburg with his wife Beth. Beth and Mike have four grown children and five grandchildren. The biographical information is provided by the speakers or collected from their websites. Dr. H. Timothy Lovelace, Jr. H. Timothy Lovelace, Jr. is a visiting professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and a professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. He has published articles in journals including the Law and History Review, American Journal of Legal History, and the Journal of American History, and he has forthcoming work in the Duke Law Journal. Lovelace’s current book project, The World is on Our Side: The U.S. and the U.N. Race Convention (Cambridge University Press), examines how U.S. civil rights politics shaped the development of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. In the spring of 2019, Lovelace served as the John Hope Franklin Visiting Professor of American Legal History at Duke University School of Law. During the 2015-2016 academic year, he served as a Law and Public Affairs Fellow at Princeton University. His scholarship has also received support from the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, Indiana University New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities program, and John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Foundation. Lovelace teaches courses in American legal history, constitutional law, and race and the law. In 2015, he received the Indiana University Trustees’ Teaching Award, and in 2019, Lovelace won the Dean Frank Motley Outstanding Faculty and Staff Award. Before joining the Indiana Law faculty, Lovelace served as the assistant director of the Center for the Study of Race and Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. The Center for the Study of Race and Law provides opportunities for students, scholars, practitioners and community members to examine and exchange ideas related to race and law through lectures, symposia and scholarship. Dr. Cassandra Newby-Alexander Cassandra Newby-Alexander is the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, professor of history, and director of the Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center for African Diaspora Studies at Norfolk State University. Her book publications include Virginia Waterways and the Underground Railroad (2017), An African American History of the Civil War in Hampton Roads (2010), co-authored Black America Series: Portsmouth (2003), Hampton Roads: Remembering Our Schools (2009), and co-edited Voices from within the Veil: African Americans and the Experience of Democracy (2008). To enhance her research interests and university service to students, Newby-Alexander has received grants totaling over $650,000. In addition, Newby-Alexander currently serves on the boards of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, the Virginia Law Foundation, the 2019 The biographical information is provided by the speakers or collected from their websites. Commemoration Commission, Historical Commission of the Supreme Court of Virginia, the Norfolk Sister City Association, and WHRO: a PBS-Affiliate. Dr. Newby-Alexander has also appeared on a number of national programs, including the Library of Congress Kluge Center’s Symposium on 1619's Cultural Exchange (broadcast on C-SPAN in April 2018), Talk of the Nation (in 1998), and Tavis Smiley Presents the “State of the Black Union 2007: Jamestown, The African American Imprint on America” (broadcast on The History Channel). Other programs include the History Channel documentary on Race, Slavery and the Civil War, and on C-SPAN when it filmed the 2010 Virginia Sesquicentennial Conference at NSU entitled, “Race, Slavery, and the Civil War: The Tough Stuff of American History.” Dr. Newby-Alexander has consulted for numerous agencies and initiatives, including the American Civil War Museum, Casemate Museum at Fort Monroe, the Hampton History Museum, the Portsmouth Museums, the Underground Railroad Educational and Cultural Program, the Virginia Historical Society, Jamestown Settlement Museum, Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Commission, Virginia Humanities, and Historic Jamestowne. The Hon. John Charles Thomas Thomas is a retired justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia. In that role he ruled on thousands of appellate matters addressing the full range of Virginia law including contracts, torts, property, public utilities, trust and estates, and taxation. Thomas is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of Virginia, the Supreme Court of the United States, and the United States Courts of Appeal for the 4th, 6th, 9th, 10th, and 11th and D.C. Circuits. He is an AAA certified Mediator and Arbitrator and serves on the AAA Panel of Commercial Arbitrators as well as on the AAA Panel of International Arbitrators. Since June 2005 he has been a Judge of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland. A frequent speaker and lecturer across the country and around the world, Thomas has lectured at the Interim University Center in Dubrovnik, Croatia on "Enforcing Interim Arbitral Awards Under the New York Convention"; he has delivered the Constitutional Law lecture to the Firsties at the United States Military Academy at West Point; and he has delivered the "First-Day, First Year" lectures at the University of Virginia School of Law and the College of William & Mary School of Law since 1990. The biographical information is provided by the speakers or collected from their websites. Slave Law in Colonial Virginia: A Timeline 1607: Jamestown, the first British North American settlement, was founded in Virginia. 1619: The first African Americans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. 1640: Virginia courts sentenced a black run away servant, John Punch, to "serve his said master . for the time of his natural Life." 1660: Virginia law enacted on English running away with negroes. BEE itt enacted That in case any English servant shall run away in company with any negroes who are incapable of makeing satisfaction by addition of time, Bee itt enacted that the English so running away in company with them shall serve for the time of the said negroes absence as they are to do for their owne by a former act. 1662: Virginia law enacted on: Run-aways. WHEREAS there are diverse loytering runaways in this country who very often absent themselves from their masters service and sometimes in a long time cannot be found, that losse of the time and the charge in the seeking them often exceeding the value of their labor: Bee it therefore enacted that all runaways that shall absent themselves from their said masters shalbe lyable to make satisfaction by service after the times by custome or indenture is expired (vizt.) double their times of service soe neglected, and if the time of their running away was in the crop or the charge of recovering them extraordinary the court shall lymitt a longer time of service proportionable to the damage the master shall make appeare he hath susteyned, and because the adjudging the time they should serve is often referred untill the time by indenture is expired, when the proofe of what is due is very uncertaine, it is enacted that the master of any runaway that intends to take the benefitt of this act, shall as soone as he hath recovered him carry him to the next commissioner and there declare and prove the time of his absence, and the charge he hath bin at in his recovery,