Civil rights attorney, racial justice activist, Ewuare X. Osayande is a leading public intellectual on matters of race, justice, and social equity. Bringing over thirty years of expertise in racial equity, his life is a testament to the courage and commitment required for human liberation and dignity. As a student activist, he challenged institutional power, confronting police brutality and institutional racism. As a poet and essayist, he gives voice to the silenced, weaving language into resistance. As an organizer and consultant, he has empowered organizations and communities to live into the principles of justice and equity. Now, as a civil rights lawyer, he fights in and out of the courtroom for those society has pushed to the margins.

Given his exceptional path, he brings a perspective that is both rare and necessary. His work is distinguished by its duality of academic rigor and activist spirit. His commitment reflects the resiliency of those who fought against slavery and segregation—a resiliency that still calls to us in this moment defined by elitism and increasing inequality.

Ewuare Osayande’s commitment to the work of racial justice began as an undergraduate student at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck,  New Jersey. Following the police killing of Phillip Pannell, Jr. in April 1990, Osayande, then president of the Association of Black and Hispanic Collegians, led a 100-mile march for justice from Teaneck to Trenton, NJ, that made national headlines and is featured in the MSNBC documentary on the case entitled “Model America.” In the aftermath, Osayande led a campus movement that culminated in the establishment of the university’s first multicultural affairs center and African American studies program.

A former professor of African American Studies at Rutgers University, he is the author of several books including Whose America?, Misogyny and the Emcee: Race, Sex and Hip Hop, Black Phoenix Uprising, Commemorating King: Speeches Honoring the Civil Rights Movement. His latest book is entitled Our Breath is the Whisper of Our Ancestors’ Defiance: The Poetry Anthology 1993 – 2023. Writing in the introduction, Dr. Joyce A. Joyce, Professor of English at Temple University, states, “As a revolutionary poet, Osayande simultaneously embodies the best of African and African American literary and political traditions. With Our Breath is the Whisper of Our Ancestors’ Defiance, Osayande proves to be the poetic scribe of this defiant generation.”

As a movement lawyer, Osayande’s interests include deconstructing the conflicts and contradictions of constitutional law and the legal constructs of race as interpreted and defined throughout the history of US jurisprudence. For Osayande, social progress does not descend from the halls of Congress or the Supreme Court. True and lasting social change can only occur as a consequence of sustained collective action. His work seeks to promote collective action that is historically grounded, justice-informed and conscience-driven. As a former public policy fellow with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Osayande provided a racial justice analysis of then President Biden’s police reform measures. Currently, he serves as the Deputy Executive Director of the Civilian Police Oversight Commission for the City of Philadelphia. He is the 2024 recipient of the Richard H. Semsker Prize for Civil Rights Law.

Ewuare X. Osayande is a modern-day renaissance man in the truest sense, merging the political with the poetic, the intellectual with the spiritual, the legal with the communal. His commitment is not motivated by the limelight of corporate media soundbite culture, but of solidarity with everyday people around the world surviving systems of oppression. Whether in the courtroom, the classroom, the boardroom, or on the block, he challenges us to imagine – and build – a more just and humane world.