Louis A. Berry Institute for Civil Rights and Justice at SULC

08/29/2026

DHS allegedly went undercover at community meetings, subpoenaed the financial records of labor unions, and created dossiers on people at a church gathering, according to court filings.

08/27/2026

Two Phoenix, Ariz. suburbs became the latest municipalities Wednesday to terminate their contracts with Flock Safety, cancelling their use of the company’s automated license plate readers (ALPRs) t…

08/27/2026

Black August asks us to remember that the fight for freedom has alw...

08/26/2026

Join the Louis A. Berry Institute for Civil Rights, Human Rights and Social Justice for our Environmental Justice Class on a Bus. This is an immersive experience exploring environmental law and justice in Louisiana communities where these issues can be seen and felt firsthand.

⚖️ Attorneys can earn 6.25 CLE hours! Non-lawyers are also welcome to join us.

Registration details, itinerary, and additional information are included in the flyer.

We hope to see you on the bus! 🚌🌎

08/26/2026

Four former Savannah Police Department employees were arrested on Friday after an investigation into the alleged misuse of the Flock Safety license plate reader system.

08/22/2026

He participated in picket lines, sit-ins and Freedom Rides, endured jailings and beatings and stood up to U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

08/04/2026

In 1946, a Louisiana teenager walked out of the death chamber alive, and then the state decided to send him back. ⚖️

His name was Willie Francis, a quiet, stammering seventeen year old from St. Martinville. He had been convicted, by an all white jury and with almost no defense, of the murder of a local pharmacist, a case built on a confession many still question to this day. In May 1946, they strapped him into a portable electric chair the state hauled from parish to parish, a chair grimly nicknamed Gruesome Gertie.

The switch was thrown. The current surged. And Willie Francis did not die. Witnesses said the boy cried out from behind the mask that he was still alive, that the chair had failed. It had been set up, it turned out, by an intoxicated guard and an inmate. Louisiana had tried to take his life and botched it.

What happened next became one of the strangest and most haunting cases in American law. Willie's family fought to stop a second ex*****on, arguing that sending him back to the chair would be cruel and unusual punishment. The case, Louisiana ex rel. Francis versus Resweber, went all the way to the United States Supreme Court in 1947. By a single vote, the Court ruled that the state could try again. The failure, they said, was an accident, and an accident did not spare him.

On May 9, 1947, Willie Francis was returned to Gruesome Gertie. This time it worked. He was eighteen years old.

His lawyer, Bertrand DeBlanc, a young Cajun attorney who took the case when no one else would, was marked by it for the rest of his life. And generations of Louisianans have wrestled with what that case revealed about justice, race, and mercy in the courts of their own state.

Willie Francis could barely read. But before he died he told his story in his own halting words, a testimony of extraordinary grace from a boy the system failed twice.

We remember him because forgetting is its own kind of injustice. 🕊️

07/27/2026

Southern University Law Center Professor Angela A. Allen-Bell continues to shape the conversation on justice and equity. Professor Bell was recently featured in The Lens article, “Somebody's life is at stake — Louisiana advocates push for fair, representative juries”, where she shared her expe...

06/17/2026

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5926625-trump-administration-shifts-education-oversight/

The Trump administration on Tuesday announced that special education and civil rights oversight would no longer be helmed by the Department of Education.  Instead, the Department of Justice (D…

06/16/2026

https://asalh.org/asalh-2026-juneteenth-convening/

ASALH 2026 Juneteenth Convening ASALH National Convening and Teach-In | From Brown v. Board to Louisiana v. Callais: The Ongoing Work to Eviscerate the 1965 VRA June 18, 2026 | Live Digital Event | 7:00 p.m. EST, 6:00 p.m. CST, 5:00 p.m. MST, 4:00 p.m. PST   As part of our Juneteenth programming, A...