Norfolk, Va.— Michelle Alexander, a civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar, will discuss the alarming impact of Black men’s high rates of imprisonment on American society at 7 p.m., Thursday, September 8 at NSU’s L. Douglas Wilder Performing Arts Center. Alexander is the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, which was considered one of the top African-American books of 2010. It won the NAACP Image Award for outstanding nonfictional literary work.

In her book, Alexander argues that the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African-American men, primarily through the War on Drugs, has created a new racial undercaste—a group of people defined largely by race that is subject to legalized discrimination, scorn and social exclusion—not unlike the days of Jim Crow. She challenges the civil rights community to put the issue of mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.

Alexander currently holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University. She was also an associate professor of law at Stanford Law School, where she directed the Civil Rights Clinics.

A graduate of Stanford Law and Vanderbilt University, Alexander clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Alexander’s appearance is free and open to the public. For more information, call (757) 823-8373 or visit www.nsu.edu.