Save the date: Breonna Taylor Lecture on Structural Inequality set for April 10

Damon Hewitt, president/executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, will deliver the 2024 Breonna Taylor Lecture on Structural Inequality on Wednesday, April 10, addressing “Democracy Forward: Advocacy, Empowerment, and Inclusion.” The event will begin at 6 p.m. at the Speed Art Museum, 2035 S. Third St.

The Breonna Taylor Lecture on Structural Inequality was established by the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law in 2022 as an annual lecture series and tribute to the life of the Louisville woman who was killed in a police shooting in 2020.

At the lecture, the Brandeis School of Law also will announce the 2024 recipient of the Darryl T. Owens Community Service Award and the law student recipients of the Breonna Taylor Legacy Fellowship.

The Owens Award, named in honor of the late groundbreaking Kentucky state representative, is presented to individuals who make a lasting impact and contribution to the Louisville community. The Breonna Taylor Legacy Fellowship also was established in 2022 through a gift endowment from artist Amy Sherald, who painted Taylor’s portrait featured on the cover of the September 2020 issue of Vanity Fair magazine. Proceeds from the sale of the portrait fund the fellowship which is presented annually to two to three law students who participate in social justice work over the summer. 

Additional details about the event will follow this spring. For more information, email lawcomm@louisville.edu.

About Damon Hewitt

Damon Hewitt is a long-time civil rights lawyer, social justice strategist, philanthropist, manager and coalition-builder who was named Lawyers’ Committee president/executive director in 2021. Prior to joining the Lawyers’ Committee, Hewitt served as inaugural executive director of the Executives’ Alliance for Boys and Men of Color. He previously served as Senior Advisor at the Open Society Foundations where he coordinated funding efforts responding to the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri.

Before entering philanthropy, Hewitt worked for over a decade as an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund where he was lead counsel on litigation and policy matters and supervised teams of lawyers and non-lawyers. He led pioneering efforts addressing the School to Prison Pipeline and coordinated litigation and advocacy efforts following Hurricane Katrina. Hewitt also served as Executive Director of the New York State Task Force on Police-on-Police Shootings, an entity analyzing police practices following the deaths of off-duty African American and Latino police officers who were shot by fellow officers after being mistaken for “criminal” suspects.

Hewitt is co‐author of a book, The School‐to‐Prison Pipeline: Structuring Legal Reform, and has published numerous articles on racial justice, school discipline policy and progressive education reform. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Louisiana State University and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

About Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to mobilize the nation’s leading lawyers as agents for change in the Civil Rights Movement. Today, the Lawyers’ Committee uses legal advocacy to achieve racial justice, fighting inside and outside the courts to ensure that Black people and other people of color have the voice, opportunity, and power to make the promises of our democracy real. For more information, please visit https://lawyerscommittee.org