The program will examine the history of executions in America and how discrimination bleeds into the entire criminal justice system. It traces a line from lynchings of old — killings outside the law — where Black people were killed in an effort to assert social control during slavery and Jim Crow, and how that eventually translated into state-ordered executions.

The panelists include Dallas’ own Dr. Rick Halperin an internationally recognized authority on the death penalty and director of SMU Human Rights Program, Rodrick Reed, the brother of Rodney Reed, an African American man condemned to death two decades ago by an all white jury, Megan Rollag of Austin based Racial Justice Coalition and nationally known abolitionist Sister Helen Prejean, who will deliver the keynote address about how race determines who lives and dies and why the death penalty is irrevocably flawed.

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