Join us on October 9 for a roundtable discussion with The Honorable Robert L. Wilkins, Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Wilkins will discuss his remarkable life, career, and family history and reflect on the complicated meanings of liberty, justice, and equality in a country still reckoning with the legacy of slavery.  

The event is free and open to the public, and is sponsored by UK Libraries, the J. David Rosenberg College of Law, the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies, and the John G. Heyburn II Initiative for Excellence in the Federal Judiciary.

Finding Black Histories in Archival Court Records
PUBLIC ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
October 9  |  10am – 11:30am  |  M.I. King Library, Great Hall

A native of Muncie, Indiana, Judge Wilkins has spent years tracing his family’s roots, some of which stretch to Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, where an enslaved ancestor named Edy Salsbury sued for and won freedom for herself and all the other enslaved people on the Salsbury plantation, which later became the Salsbury Free Negro Settlement. 

Judge Wilkins will discuss how an entry in UK Libraries’ Notable Kentucky African Americans database led him to find his family's stories in court records at the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives, and will share his experiences working with historical legal documents and other archival materials. He will be joined by Kentucky State Archivist Rusty Heckaman, UK Historian Vanessa Holden, and UK Special Collections Librarian Reinette Jones.

Seating is limited, and RSVPs are required.

U.S. Judge Robert L. Wilkins served as a public defender and a partner in private practice before his appointment to the federal judiciary in 2010. He also served as the lead plaintiff in a landmark civil rights case, Wilkins, et al. v. State of Maryland, and played a key role in the establishment of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, which opened in 2016 on the National Mall. Judge Wilkins was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on January 15, 2014.