The Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education is pleased to announce that the 12th annual Tom E. Moses Memorial Lecture on the U.S. Constitution will be given by Elizabeth Hinton, author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration In America, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, 2016. Hinton is an Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on African American History, Urban History, and Mass Incarceration and Inequality in America.

The Moses Memorial Lecture is named for the late Tom E. Moses, a longtime civil libertarian, activist, and founder of the Eastern Panhandle branch of the ACLU-WV. The lecture will be given on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016 at 7 p.m. in the Auditorium of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education on the campus of Shepherd University. A book signing coordinated by Shepherdstown’s Four Seasons Books and a reception sponsored by the Shepherd University Common Reading Program will follow the lecture. Admission is free and open to the public, but due to limited space advance reservations will be required.

In the United States today, one in every 31 adults is under some form of penal control, including one in eleven African American men. How did the “land of the free” become the home of the world’s largest prison system? Challenging the belief that America’s prison problem originated with the Reagan administration’s War on Drugs, Elizabeth Hinton will trace the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: the social welfare programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society at the height of the civil rights era.

Persons interested in reserving seats should call Mr. Jody Brumage at 304-876-5648 or email him at jbrumage@shepherd.edu.