Rukia Lumumba, CASES’ Director of Youth Programs, will be featured as a panelist for the Criminal Justice Town Hall on June 28, 2014, at Mississippi Freedom Summer’s 50th Anniversary commemoration in Jackson, Mississippi. Anniversary events will celebrate the 1964 Freedom Summer, in which hundreds of Americans–at great personal risk–traveled South to draw attention to segregation and to help eliminate barriers to voting for people of color.

The anniversary celebration will also include events on the current status of people of color in the United States, including the Criminal Justice Town Hall. In the panel discussion, Lumumba and other panelists will discuss the war on drugs and mass incarceration and their disproportionate effects on youths of color. The United States currently incarcerates youth at the world’s highest rate, with youth of color are significantly more likely to be incarcerated. In 2011:

• Black youth were 4.6 times more likely to be incarcerated than White youth;
• Native American youth were 3.2 times more likely; and
• Latino youth were 1.8 times more likely.

Anniversary events will convene in Jackson both to recognize the accomplishments of those who have worked to eliminate political segregation in Mississippi and to discuss how our nation can help all of its citizens to have an equal opportunity to reach their full potential. For more information, please visit Freedom50.org.