America’s Second Founding—Charles Sumner, the Civil War, and Reconstruction

Add to Calendar: Add to Calendar: 2026-11-10 16:30:00 2026-11-10 17:30:00 America’s Second Founding—Charles Sumner, the Civil War, and Reconstruction Event Description The Supreme Court has described Reconstruction as America’s “Second Founding.” But who were the Second Founders? In this year’s annual Battisti Lecture, biographer and legal scholar Zaakir Tameez discusses the life and legacy of one Second Founder: Charles Sumner, the abolitionist statesman best known for being beaten nearly to death on the Senate floor by the proslavery congressman Preston Brooks in 1856. This violent episode has obscured Sumner’s status as the most passionate champion of equal rights of his time—a man whom W.E.B. DuBois described as America’s “seer of democracy.”In this lecture, Tameez will present Sumner as a constitutional visionary who helped to devise the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. He will discuss Sumner’s early legal career, including his attempt to integrate Boston public schools in 1849 alongside a Black lawyer as part of the nation’s first interracial legal team. He will highlight Sumner’s late-in-life role helping to create the Howard Law School and train the nation’s first generation of civil rights lawyers, including some of the founders of the NAACP. Reception to follow.Speaker’s Bio: Zaakir Tameez is a scholar of antitrust and constitutional law. A graduate of Yale Law School and the University of Virginia, he clerked for Judge Jill Pryor on the Eleventh Circuit. His book, Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation, was the winner of the 2026 Cooley Prize, an annual award for the best book on constitutional law given by the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. Born in Houston, Texas, he now practices commercial litigation in New York City.Reading Materials. Moot Courtroom, CWRU School of Law School of Law School of Law America/New_York public