Alameda County Public Defender Woods kicks off Racial Justice Speaker Series
More than 200 people came online Sept. 16 for the inaugural lecture in UC Davis Law’s 2020-21 Racial Justice Speaker Series. Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods delivered a highly informative and unflinching talk titled “‘A riot is the language of the unheard’: Is Racial Justice Possible in America?”
Dean Kevin R. Johnson introduced Woods and the speaker series, which will continue into March 2021. “I am looking forward to a yearlong discussion of the racial justice issues that have reached the headlines recently but very sadly, have been with us for a long time,” Johnson said.
Appointed in 2012, Woods is the only Black Chief Public Defender in Alameda County’s history and the only Black chief public defender in California. His speech drew a direct line from the horrors of slavery to the Jim Crow era to the police killings of Black men and women over the past several years and the mass protests that erupted in summer 2020.
“Understanding American slavery is vital to understanding racial inequality today,” Woods said. He noted that the police forces of today have roots in the “slave patrols” of armed white men who monitored and enforced discipline of enslaved people in the 1700s and 1800s. And the KKK members and lynch mob participants who terrorized and killed Black people during Jim Crow era went on to be district attorneys and legislators.
“Lynching and racial terror profoundly comprise what came to be the criminal justice system,” Woods said. “Just as the slave patrols were watching, catching or beating Black enslaved people, modern-day police are watching, arresting, beating, searching and shooting unarmed Black people.”
The title of Woods' speech references a quote by Martin Luther King Hall Jr., for whom UC Davis Law’s building is named: “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
“Is racial justice possible in America?" Woods asked. "I think we can find the answer to that question in Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote … and come back to what it is that America has failed to hear. America has failed to hear the voices of Black people in this country for generations.”
The only way to have a genuine conversation about race is to learn the true history and impact of slavery, Woods said.
"Make sure your children learn the history, and demand that it be taught in schools," he said.
The Davis Vanguard reported on Woods' talk.
The Racial Justice Speaker series continues on Wednesday, Sept. 23, with a talk by Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, a UC Davis Law alum from the class of ’84, titled “Protests and pandemic: an equity response.”