Speaker: Lionel Porter

Lionel Porter received his undergraduate degree in English and journalism from Indiana State University. He was a contributor to the school's literary magazine,The Pied Pipings in which he reviewed Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. As a graduate student, he received a fellowship to attend The University of Connecticut where he received a Masters Degree in Educational Psychology. He has taught and lectured on African-American writers at various colleges and universities in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Porter is also a student of African-American history and is an admirer of the example and vision of Frederick Douglass.

For several years, Lionel Porter served as Legal Redress Chair of the South Middlesex Branch of the NAACP in Framingham,Massachusetts. While there, he was successful in securing substantial damage awards for grievants who had experienced discriminatory treatment.He is a graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Law. He also received a government appointment to the Connecticut State Board of Mediation and Arbitration as its public member and seminar training in Commercial Arbitration with the American Arbitration Association.

Lionel will be speaking about early American slavery.