Mitchell Hamline's new center will focus on Black Americans' relationship with the law

T. Anansi Wilson wants to see more Black lawyers and judges. But more than anything, he wants everyone in the courtroom to consider Black Americans' lived experiences so they get a fairer shake.

"The law tries to act like there's some neutral party, like there's no bias," Wilson said. "But you can't say that when everyone who practices law looks the same, has the same background."

That's why Wilson is the inaugural director of Mitchell Hamline's new Center for the Study of Black Life and the Law. The St. Paul school announced his appointment Friday and explained that the center will be a "repository for both theory and policy on how laws and legislative proposals affect Black life."

The center will offer courses on critical race theory; race, sexuality and the law; and a class that explores how Black culture has been used historically as a pretext for probable cause.

Albert Brownlee, a third-year Mitchell Hamline student and a representative of the school's Black Law Students Association, said Wilson brings his experiences as a Black person into the classroom, making lessons more engaging.

"He's caused me to think more critically about race and other issues of marginalized populations such as queer and Indigenous persons," Brownlee said.

The classes Wilson teaches at Mitchell Hamline sharply focus both on how policy and legislation came to be — and who wrote it.

Brownlee pointed out that many of the Founding Fathers enslaved Black people and that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery save for one narrow circumstance: It's still legal to impose involuntary servitude on people convicted of crimes.

"How does that inform the laws which our nation was based upon?" Brownlee said. "They were written for white men, period. You can't study the law without really studying its true foundational context and meaning."

Both Brownlee and Wilson said U.S. law has long been written for the benefit of straight white men. And in order to pursue justice for people who don't fit that demographic, Wilson said he wants the center to focus on the issues that the Black transgender and queer communities face.

Last year, Wilson was struck by the story of an Alabama teenager, Nigel Shelby, who died of suicide after years of being bullied for being gay. Of the 180 cases of anti-transgender homicides the Human Rights Campaign tracked between 2013 and 2020, about 80% of the victims were Black and brown trans women.

"Of course I'm thinking about the Daunte Wrights, the Sandra Blands and the George Floyds," Wilson said. "I'm also thinking about the Nigels of the world and the folks who go unnamed."

Although its first course offerings will launch in the fall, the center already has two virtual events planned for this academic year.

On Feb. 21, Wilson will moderate a conversation called "Honoring Black Life" that explores Black joy and sorrow and what it means to be Black in America today. And on April 5, the center will host Imani Perry, the author of "South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation."

"These are exactly the kinds of conversations we need to be having in a society where the law disproportionately punishes Black lives, and we're thrilled to have Dr. Wilson leading the law school in exploring these issues," law school President and Dean Anthony Niedwiecki said in a statement.