About Me

I grew up as the only child of two college educators in Virginia Beach, Virginia, before heading down to Atlanta, Georgia, to attend Morehouse College. There, I majored in political science, graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and then moved to New Haven, Connecticut, to attend the Yale Law School. After graduating from there, I clerked for a United States District Judge in Richmond, Virginia, the following year before returning to Atlanta to practice law, focusing mainly in the areas of employment discrimination, education, and civil rights litigation. I have been a practicing lawyer for more than 25 years.

While in Atlanta, I was initiated into the Nu Mu Lambda (DeKalb County Alumni) Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the first intercollegiate Greek-letter organization established for African American men. I am currently a Life Member of the Fraternity. While working with my fraternity brothers to organize a series of voter registration drives in 2004, we ran headlong into some early precursors of Georgia’s now-well-known modern voter suppression regime. I brought and won my first voting rights lawsuit against the State of Georgia to stop them from interfering with our fraternity’s rights, under federal law, to hold voter registration drives at times and places of our choosing.

Ultimately that lawsuit resulted in a change in my career focus and my eventual move to the Washington, DC metro area in 2007. I settled and have lived in Prince George’s County, Maryland, since then. After working for several years in the nonprofit sector in voting rights, I moved to the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In 2022, I returned to the nonprofit sector, where I lead the Voting Rights Practice Group at the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Outside of the office, most of my community work is focused on making Prince George’s County a better place to live, work, and play. I write periodically on smart growth, walkable urbanism, transit-oriented development, and political governance and accountability issues in my blog, Prince George’s Urbanist. I also have significant experience advocating land use and zoning legal issues before the Maryland–National Capital Park and Planning Commission, the Prince George’s County Council, the Board of Zoning of Appeals, and various Maryland courts.

I am the founder and president of Greater Capitol Heights Improvement Corporation (GCHIC), a nonprofit 501(c)(3) public charity dedicated to stimulating revitalization, redevelopment, and reinvestment in the inner-Beltway communities of Central Prince George’s County. In that capacity, or as an engaged citizen, I have collaborated with numerous groups to put on public presentations and to engage county officials in positive dialogue around sustainable growth and community revitalization issues. I also frequently attend and offer public comments in connection with comprehensive planning efforts and individual development review proceedings.

In all that I do, I try to keep in the forefront of my mind a lesson about the preciousness of time and the importance of rising to the moment, as reflected in this poem often recited by Morehouse College’s legendary former President, Dr. Benjamin E. Mays:

I have only just a minute,
Only sixty seconds in it.
Forced upon me, can’t refuse it.
Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it.
But it’s up to me to use it.
I must suffer if I lose it.
Give account if I abuse it.
Just a tiny little minute,
But eternity is in it.