Celebrating Critical Race Theory at 20

The year 2009 marks the twentieth anniversary of the first Critical Race Theory (CRT) workshop. On July 8, 1989, more than twenty scholars "who were interested in defining and elaborating on the lived reality of race, and who were open to the aspiration of developing theory" gathered together at a workshop in Madison, Wisconsin. 1 The 1989 workshop, which was spearheaded by Kimberle Crenshaw and organized by her, Neil Gotanda, and Stephanie Phillips, also included as its participants Anita Allen, Taunya Banks, Derrick Bell, Kevin Brown, Paulette Caldwell, John Calmore, Harlon Dalton, Richard Delgado, Linda Greene, Trina Grillo, Isabelle Gunning, Angela Harris, Mari Matsuda, Teresa Miller, Philip T. Nash, Elizabeth Patterson, Benita Ramsey, Robert Suggs, Kendall Thomas, and Patricia Williams. In 2008, a committee of relatively junior scholars, including Mario Barnes, Jennifer Chacon, Rose Cuison Villazor, Kaaryn Gustafson, Melissa Murray, Camille Nelson, Catherine Smith, and me, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, as its chair, sought to renew and reinvigorate the discussion started by the pioneering scholars who attended the first workshop in 1989. We planned and organized a conference/workshop entitled "CRT 20: Honoring Our Past, Charting Our Future" to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of these scholars' first historic meeting during the weekend of April 2-4, 2009.