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Assistant Professor of
Law
Dtibbs@sulc.edu
(225) 771-4900 ext. 153
Courses taught:
Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, and
Civil Rights Law
Dr. Donald F. Tibbs joined the
faculty of the Southern University Law Center in
Fall 2005. Previously he served as adjunct faculty
at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, in the
School of Justice Studies and Inquiry and the
Department of African American Studies. In both
departments he taught a variety of courses on race
and the law, including Critical Race Theory;
Stereotypes, Prejudice and the Law; Law and Racial
Identity Resistance; and seminars on both the Civil
Rights and Black Power Movement. He also taught at
the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and
Winthrop University and guest lectured on race and
law at the University of Wisconsin, California State
University-Long Beach, and in numerous courses at
Arizona State University.
Dr. Tibbs received his Juris Doctorate (J.D) in 1996
from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
Following law school he worked as a civil rights
attorney in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 1998, he
returned to academics to pursue his Doctor of
Philosophy (Ph.D.) from Arizona State University in
the School of Justice and Social Inquiry where he
emphasized race and law in legal history. At Arizona
State University he was a Graduate College Academic
Support Fellow (GCASF), a Preparing Future Faculty
Fellow (PFF), and named the Arizona State University
2001 Sheila S. Skipper Outstanding Graduate Student.
His doctoral dissertation entitled “Black Power and
Prison Power: The Prisoner Union Movement in North
Carolina, 1967-1979,” is a narrative legal history
tracing the roots of black power behind prison walls
to the establishment of the North Carolina
Prisoners’ Labor Union. The subject of his work is
most noted as a narrative history of the Supreme
Court case, Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners Labor
Union, Inc., 433 U.S. 119 (1977).
Following his doctoral studies., Dr. Tibbs served
twice as an academic fellow at the University of
Wisconsin Law School. In 2003 he was a fellow at the
J. Willard Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History
where he presented research on the Black Power
Movement in legal history. From January 2004 -
August 2005, he served as the William H. Hastie Law
Teaching Fellow where he completed his Master’s of
Laws (LL.M.) degree. While a Hastie Fellow, Dr.
Tibbs took a break from legal history to conduct an
ethnographical study of the Inmate Disciplinary
Process at the Fox Lake Prison – a medium security
prison located in Fox Lake, Wisconsin. Titled,
“Inmate Discipline in Wisconsin: How Law “Works”
Behind Prison Walls,” his study reconstructed how
non-lawyers understand and make use of the
intersection of law, power, and resistance during
the process of punishing those already being
punished. Most recently he was named the 2007-2008
Harry S. Golden Civil Rights Research Fellow at the
University of North Carolina-Charlotte.
Dr. Tibbs’s research interest include Black Power
Legal History; African American Intellectual
History; Comparative Black Nationalism; Critical
Race Theory; and Race and Punishment. He is a
published scholar with articles appearing in the
Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal,
an edited book titled Neighborhood Rebels: Black
Power at the Local Level (Palgrave Press 2008), the
African American National Biography (Oxford
University Press 2008), and a forthcoming book on
the Long Civil Rights Movement. His works in
progress include two articles on race and the legal
implications of the Black Power Movement, and a book
manuscript, tentatively titled “Black Power, Prison
Power: The North Carolina Prison Prisoners’ Labor
Union,” projected for completion in 2009.
Dr. Tibbs also serves as the Director of the
Institute for Civil Rights and Justice at the
Southern University Law Center where he is
instrumental in grant writing, organizing symposia,
and establishing a legal curriculum in civil rights
at the Law Center.
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