Mark Rosenbaum, a Harvard-educated lawyer, former ACLU chief counsel in Southern California, and one of the nation’s most influential civil rights lawyers who previously worked on cases representing the late Coretta Scott King, the First Lady of the Civil Rights Movement and Cesar Chavez, the 20th century Latino civil rights leader, will deliver the Introductory Statement of Purpose at the launching of the Bankole Thompson First Amendment and Social Change Lecture Series initiated by The PuLSE Institute, Detroit’s independent and national anti-poverty think tank.
The program will take place virtually on Friday, Feb. 27, 4pm-6pm. Attendance to the event is complimentary but registration is required. To secure tickets click the following link https://www.eventbrite.com/e/inaugural-bankole-thompson-first-amendment-lecture-series-set-for-feb-27-tickets-1981982995493?aff=oddtdtcreator.
The annual lecture series is named after Bankole Thompson, the founder and dean of The PuLSE Institute and a nationally acclaimed journalist, social critic and standard-bearer for economic justice issues, who has been a champion of the First Amendment reflected in his body of work which demonstrates his commitment to speaking truth to power.
Thompson was honored eight years ago with a U.S. Congressional Record officially placing his body of work into the record of the 115th Congress as a journalistic thought leader and a stalwart of the nation’s most vulnerable. Because of his impact and contributions, the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library in 2015 requested to formally establish the Bankole Thompson Papers to document his work for students and for posterity. The Bentley houses the papers of every Michigan governor and other significant figures in the state’s history.
A member of the National Press Club of Washington D.C., Thompson, is one of the first Black editors in the nation to conduct a series of exclusive sit-interviews with former President Barack Obama and wrote two books on Obama. The former top editor of the Michigan Chronicle, the state’s African American newspaper, Thompson, is the author of five books including his latest, Fiery Conscience, a compendium of analytical essays about the impact of Thompson’s journalism and how it reflects the speaking truth to power legacy of the 19th century abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The book reviewed by Forbes, is listed in the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, considered the premier repository on the global Black experience. His next book, HOPE: On The Mountain Of Fear is set to be out in April of this year.
He is a twice-a-week opinion columnist at The Detroit News and host of the podcast Bankole’s Nation.
Rosenbaum who has practiced law for half a century, has litigated several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and taught courses in liberty and equality and free speech at universities around the world. He was recently praised by his frequent co-counsel and collaborator Erwin Chemerinsky, the internationally celebrated First Amendment lawyer and dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law.
Speaking about Rosenbaum, Chemerinsky noted, “It is truly extraordinary for somebody to have spent 50 years as a public interest lawyer at the level Mark has and across so many different issues.”
Rosenbaum, who most recently served as the lead counsel in the historic Detroit right to literacy lawsuit, which he won before the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that amounted to almost a $100 million settlement for the Detroit Public Schools Community District, is currently the senior special counsel for strategic litigation at Public Counsel in California.
Rosenbaum has long admired and followed Thompson’s work. He contributed a chapter in the journalist’s latest book Fiery Conscience, which he described as “a fitting tribute to a life of commitment to justice and courage to expose injustice.” In the book, Rosenbaum explained how Thompson was instrumental in winning the Detroit students right to literacy case by helping to shape the debate in the court of public opinion, while the issue was formally proceeding in the court of competent jurisdiction.
Even after securing the win at the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in April of 2020, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, defendant in the right to literacy suit, wavered on her previous position to see through a just solution to the case. Nonetheless, Thompson increased the public pressure on the governor by writing newspaper columns, discussing the issue on his radio program and galvanizing allies including corporate and civic leaders. Among those who contributed to editorials published by The PuLSE Institute were prominent Detroit business leader Cindy Pasky, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, noted civil rights lawyer Godfrey Dillard and Attorney Tina M. Patterson, the President of The Institute, among others.
Local grassroots organizations, as well as national prominent advocacy groups, also lent their voices to the public outcry to support a right to literacy, including PEN America.
This mounting pressure from a myriad of groups as well as that which Thompson helped to apply on Whitmer resulted to an early morning release sent out by the governor’s office submitting to the public demand to settle the case. Following the release from the governor’s office, Rosenbaum, sent a text message to Thompson right away thanking him for the substantial advocacy that he marshaled which helped influence the results of the case.
The inaugural keynote speaker for the lecture series is Jim Vincent, the former president of the Providence Branch of the NAACP in Rhode Island and a national civil rights activist. A graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania, Vincent, has been a longtime advocate for civil and human rights in Rhode Island and across the nation, helping to lead the push towards reparatory justice and pushing strongly for the empowerment of African Americans and other minorities. He was very instrumental in former Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo’s decision to nominate Melissa A. Long to serve as the first Black justice on the Rhode Island Supreme Court, which previously never had a person of color sit on the state’s highest court.
The formulation of the Bankole Thompson First Amendment and Social Change Lecture Series originated from the 2017 First Amendment case against Thompson which he won in a precedent-setting case in the Michigan Court of Appeals after he was sued by James Edwards, a prominent and self-proclaimed White nationalist who sued him and The Detroit News in 2016 for a column he wrote. Edwards whose radio program in the past featured guests like David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Holocaust deniers and racists, took issue with Thompson referring to him as a KKK leader in a column.
A three-judge panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in favor of Thompson and The Detroit News, significantly issuing a published opinion declaring that his column was protected opinion speech. Thompson was represented by two of the nation’s leading First Amendment lawyers Len Niehoff and Jim Stewart from the premier Honigman law firm in Detroit, who were retained by the late publisher and editor of The Detroit News, Jonathan Wolman. Niehoff is also a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.
“A lecture series in Bankole Thompson’s honor is long overdue. His glaring body of work has been yearning for such an enlightening and empowering series. February 27, 2026 is a date with living history,” said C. Paschal Eze, the Chairman of the Board of The PuLSE Institute.
Attorney Patterson, the President of The Institute added, “Bankole Thompson has been the media authority when it comes to tackling the issues of racism and inequality, gallantly holding the political structure accountable when it fails to consider the needs of the overlooked and the least of these. His direct challenges as a member of the fourth estate have not been without adverse effects, but his conviction has overcome these adversities as a living example of First Amendment freedoms. The PuLSE Institute welcomes this lecture series in Thompson’s honor as a necessary component of a free and equal society.”
For registration to this inaugural event visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/inaugural-bankole-thompson-first-amendment-lecture-series-set-for-feb-27-tickets-1981982995493?aff=oddtdtcreator.
