Moderated by our Associates Darryl Tarver and Neill Thupari, Former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, who served three consecutive terms (1987-1999) as the city's first African American mayor; former Maryland Court of Appeals Chief Judge Robert Bell, the first African American to serve as the chief judge of Maryland's highest court; and legendary University of Maryland Carey School of Law Professor Larry Gibson, a renown constitutional law scholar who served as Associate Deputy Attorney General in the Carter Administration and, in 1987, masterminded Kurt Schmoke's successful campaign for mayor of Baltimore participated on a panel discussing, among other topics, the origin stories of their respective legal careers, their experiences in the legal field thus far, and the distance that the law — and the legal profession — has traveled for African Americans from the passage of the 15th Amendment (ratified 150 years ago this year) to the present.
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