Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey is Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Georgia State University and Co-Director for the Center for the Advancement of Students and Alumni (CASA). Her research interests include Hip Hop culture, popular culture, political behavior and psychology, and Black women and politics. Previously she was a Nasir Jones (Nas) Fellow with the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University (2018). She is the author of Pulse of the People: Rap Music and Black Political Attitudes (2015, University of Pennsylvania Press). She currently is a co-host of The Intersection: Where Black Popular Culture Meets Social Justice with Booker Edwards and Lisa Ferrell.

Darryl K. Brown teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Adjudication and Evidence at UVA Law, among other courses. Before joining the law faculty in 2007, he was the Class of 1958 Alumni Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, where he joined the faculty in 1998. He is the author of Free Market Criminal Justice: How Democracy and Laissez Faire Undermine the Rule of Law. Brown clerked for Chief Judge Dolores K. Sloviter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit after earning his law degree at the University of Virginia. He was an associate at Kilpatrick & Cody in Atlanta before working as an assistant public defender in Clarke County, Ga. 

A.D. Carson is an award-winning performance artist and educator whose work focuses on race, literature, history, rhetorics & performance. His album, i used to love to dream, the first-ever rap album peer-reviewed for publication with an academic press, was released with University of Michigan Press in 2020. This work builds on his doctoral dissertation, Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions, a rap album that is the primary feature of a digital archive at phd.aydeethegreat.com. He is also the author of a novel, COLD, which hybridizes poetry, rap lyrics, and prose. His most recent album is iv: talking to ghosts. Dr. Carson is assistant professor of Hip-Hop & the Global South at the University of Virginia.

Richelle Claiborne is a multi-faceted R&B / soul artist and Charlottesville, VA native. She has performed up and down the East Coast singing everything from jazz to metal to her own blend of original tunes and spoken word poetry, in a performance aptly named "The Richelle Show”. As well as a singer and songwriter across many genres, Richelle is also an actress and a poet. She has written two albums, several chapbooks, a one-woman show, and has made theater & music with countless other gifted artists for the past thirty years. She is a voice actor on the award-winning podcast, Seizing Freedom, which most recently was recognized with a 2022 NETA Public Media Award. More about her work can be found at www.richelleclaiborne.com

Remy St. Clair is an emcee, rapper, and recording artist based in Charlottesville, VA. He performs as part of Sons of Ichibei, a hip hop duo that promotes inclusivity and community-building. Remy has spent years developing and boosting the local hip hop and artistic scene. In 2013, he co-founded Rugged Arts, a hip hop showcase for underground artists in Charlottesville, and in 2017, Remy co-founded 9 Pillars, an annual weeklong hip hop festival. Remy is also a radio producer and presenter and for years programmed The Throne Room, a platform for local independent artists, as well as the radio show, The Midday Getaway. He also hosted Cville Pride for many years. 

Molly Conger is a journalist based in Charlottesville, VA. She conducts in-depth, investigative work on white supremacists, neo-Nazis and hate groups in the US. Since 2017, and in the aftermath of the deadly Unite the Right rally that year, she has been live-tweeting Charlottesville city government meetings and other official meetings, as well as legal proceedings involving hate crimes and white supremacist violence. She has also written and produced podcasts, including a series based on her research of the trial against the Unite the Right car attacker. In addition to her extensive Twitter journalism @socialistdogmom, Molly has published essays in news outlets such as The Guardian and Slate.

Andrea L. Dennis is Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Martin Chair of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law where she teaches criminal law, evidence, family law, and juvenile law.  Previously, she served as an assistant federal public defender in the District of Maryland.  Her scholarship explores criminal and juvenile defense lawyering, race and criminal justice, and the impact of criminal justice on the lives of children and youth.  Practitioners, courts, and media nationwide have cited her seminal legal article on the use of rap lyrics as criminal evidence.  She is co-author of Rap on Trial  (The New Press 2019), which examines the issue in depth.

Mickey Factz is a world-class master MC who has dedicated over half of his life to lyricism and its improvement. A fifteen-year career that has spawned record deals, commercials, independence, conceptual songs, and mentoring newer artists, Mickey has constantly elevated the culture with his ideas and innovations. He is the founder and Dean of Students at Pendulum Ink, a school of Hip Hop lyricism founded in 2021 for emcees, featuring over eighty masterclasses in lyrical and practical skills. The school, which can be found on Twitter and Instagram @PendulumInk, is yet another stepping-stone into cementing Mickey’s legacy within the culture.

Kim Forde-Mazrui teaches Constitutional Law, Employment Discrimination, Criminal Law, and Race and Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. His scholarship focuses on equal protection, especially involving race and sexual orientation. His publications have considered whether and how to select demographically diverse juries; whether affirmative action policies that employ race-neutral means are constitutional; whether America is morally obligated to remedy past discrimination; and whether racial profiling and other discriminatory practices by law enforcement are adequately deterred by current constitutional doctrines. In 2003, he was appointed the inaugural director of the Center for the Study of Race and Law at UVA. 

Anthony Kwame Harrison is the Edward S. Diggs Professor in Humanities and Professor of Sociology, with a joint appointment in Africana Studies, at Virginia Tech. His areas of research include hip-hop studies, Black creative practices, and the racialized construction of social space. He is author of Hip Hop Underground (Temple University Press, 2009) and Ethnography (Oxford University Press, 2018) and co-edited Race in the Marketplace: Crossing Critical Boundaries (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). His multi-model scholarship—including writings, illustrations, a musical essay, and a co-produced film—is featured in a 2019 special issue of the arts-based journal Dysfunction (also featuring a piece by Corey Miles). 

Eden Heilman is the Legal Director of the ACLU of Virginia. As Legal Director of the ACLU of Virginia, Eden oversees all of the organization’s federal and state court litigation, administrative advocacy, and legal advocacy in Virginia. Eden has over 16 years of experience litigating issues pertaining to juvenile justice, education, disability rights, prison conditions, free speech, reproductive rights, trans rights and more. She has also authored several publications and serves on the Virginia State Bar’s Special Committee on Lawyer Referrals. Prior to joining the ACLU of Virginia in 2018, Eden served as the managing attorney and director of the Southern Poverty Law Center in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

Kristin Henning is the Blume Professor of Law and Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at Georgetown Law and was previously the Lead Attorney of the Juvenile Unit at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. . She is an editor and co-author of Rights, Race, and Reform: Fifty Years of Child Advocacy in the Juvenile Justice System (2018). Her new book, The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth (Pantheon/Penguin Random House, 2021) has received rave reviews in the Washington Post and  New York Times and was awarded a 2022 Media for a Just Society Award by Evident Change and the 2022 Social Justice Advocacy Award from the In Margins Book Awards Committee.

Keegan Hudson is a second-year student and President of the Black Law Students Association at the UVA School of Law. Prior to his studies at UVA Law, he served in the office of South Carolina Congressman, James Clyburn, as Staff Assistant to the Majority Whip. He graduated Cum Laude with a B.S. in Agricultural Business and Management from Alcorn State University in 2020. During his undergraduate studies, he also served as a Legislative Intern for the House Committee on Homeland Security and the Congressional Black Caucus. Most recently, he worked as a summer associate at Bracewell LLP in Houston, Texas. 

Corey J. Miles is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Africana Studies Program at Tulane University. He investigates surveillance, policing, and Black aesthetics in the U.S. south. His forthcoming book Hip-Hop's Vibe: Rural Black Aesthetics and Racialized Emotions in the Carceral South (University Press of Mississippi) maps the ways the U.S. south itself is a site of carcerality, and how trap music is used as a relational space to contest and make sense of emotional and spatial violence. His current project builds on the idiom that suggests ‘doing time’ is a carceral experience and asks, “In what ways do Black people resist doing time and/or time itself?”

Erik Nielson is Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Richmond. He writes regularly for outlets such as The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone. He has been lead author on three amicus briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court--which included support from artists such as Killer Mike, Chance the Rapper, Meek Mill, T.I., Big Boi, and Luther Campbell—and has frequently testified as an expert witness in cases involving rap lyrics as evidence in criminal cases. His most recent book, Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America, co-authored with Andrea L. Dennis, was a finalist for the Library of Virginia literary awards, and winner of the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation’s First Amendment Award.

Angelique Phipps is an experienced public relations and brand strategist with almost two

decades of communications experience, serving clients in the legal, financial, entertainment, and hospitality industries. She is the principal owner of AMP PR. As a subject matter expert in the area of social justice communications, Phipps has worked extensively on a myriad of focus areas relative to historical and systemic issues associated with the criminal justice system, violence against women, and equity in the workplace. Some of her highlight placements include National Public Radio, ABC-TV, Rolling Stone, ESPN, HuffPost.com, Paper Mag, USA Today, The Undefeated, the Red Bulletin, and many more. 

Mac Phippsis a rapper and songwriter from New Orleans, Louisiana. He is best known for his work with No Limit Records. His 1998 album, Shell Shocked, reached #11 on the US Billboard 200 and #4 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. In 2001, he was wrongly convicted of manslaughter after a man was shot and killed at one of his shows. At trial, his lyrics were used as evidence against him by the prosecution. During his incarceration he continued to write music, helped young men develop coping skills for anger and depression, and was awarded a lifetime achievement award for his service to fellow inmates. After he filed multiple applications for clemency and his case was investigated and covered by the Medill Justice Project at Northwestern University and national media outlets, Phipp’s appeal for clemency was granted and he was released from prison in 2021 after serving 21 years. Presently, he is still seeking full exoneration, mentoring youth, and writing music. In 2022 he released five singles and an EP.

Meet the Panelists