Join us for a Pizza and Politics featuring Gloria J. Browne-Marshall!

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About Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is an EMMY Award-winning writer, playwright, social justice attorney, and Professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College (City University of New York), with an affiliation in the college’s Department of Africana Studies. She teaches classes in constitutional law, race and politics, gender and justice, evidence, and created the literature, race, and law course. In Fall 2022, she was a Resident Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics and a Harvard Kennedy School Visiting Professor. Prior to academia, Browne-Marshall litigated cases at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, and the NAACP LDF. She was a law clerk at the Eastern District of Pennsylvania as well as the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia. She studied Political Science, in graduate school, at the University of Ibadan, in Nigeria, and social justice at the Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary, in Atlanta, in 2022.

Browne-Marshall's forthcoming book A Protest History of the United States (Beacon) uses primary research, memoir, and interviews to take readers on a 500-year journey from Indigenous land battles and slave uprisings to protests for civil rights, labor unions, women’s rights, climate change as well as anti-war demonstrations and protests over police-involved civilian assaults. Her book The Voting Rights War: The NAACP and the Ongoing Struggle for Justice was reviewed by Publishers Weekly in which the reviewer noted – “with vivid descriptions of voter intimidation, murders, riots, and lynchings, this work emphasizes that 'freedom is not free.'" She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power received the Phillis Wheatley Book Award from SDofMP and her seminal book "Race, Law, and American Society: 1607 to Present" was called “a gem” by Cornel West.

Gloria Browne-Marshall has provided legal commentary on CNN, MSNBC, France24, BBC, NPR, NY1, and print media. “Law of the Land” is the title of her podcast. She has appeared in eight documentary films including “Let the World See” (ABC), “Becoming Frederick Douglass (PBS), and “Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom” (PBS). Her travel to Angola resulted in the award-winning documentary short film Before 1619: She Took Justice. Browne-Marshall has addressed audiences at the Library of Congress, National Archives, International Monetary Fund, National Press Club as well as literary groups, colleges, libraries, community groups, nonprofit organizations, and law associations in the United States, Europe, and Africa.

This year marks Browne-Marshall’s entry into the Marvel universe with her short story titled Chaos Rules in the anthology Captain America: The Shield of Sam Wilson. Her animated series Your Democracy about the U.S. Constitution has received over 500,000 views and film festivals awards. Her stage-play SHOT: Caught a Soul depicts a Black teen haunting the White police officer who shot him and her play Dreams of Emmett Till updates the tragic encounter between Carolyn Bryant and Emmett Till while her play CLASS explores the racialized class conflicts over the American Dream. Browne-Marshall is a Pulitzer Center grant recipient and received the Wiley College Women of Excellence Award, New York County Bar Association Ida B. Wells-Barnett Award, and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, among others. She is a member of PEN International, PEN America, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., National Bar Association, Authors Guild’s DEI Committee, NAACP, National Press Club, the National Association of Black Journalists, and the Dramatists Guild, among others.