UHLC Black History Month Virtual Lecture

The University of Houston Law Center presents a virtual lecture in honor of Black History Month, "Genealogical Research into America's Antebellum Past: The Challenges of Finding the Enslaved, the Free, and the Enslavers," featuring University of New Mexico Law Professor Emerita Sherri L. Burr. Accredited for 1 hour of MCLE.

Six years of tracking relatives and ancestors resulted in Professor Sherri Burr’s book, Complicated Lives: Free Blacks in Virginia, 1619-1865. Carolina Academic Press published the book in 2019. It has received numerous awards and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History. After hearing Professor Burr present her part of research in 2018, the Aaron Burr Association unanimously voted to acknowledge that Aaron Burr fathered two children of color with Mary Emmons and that all of their descendants were legitimate members of the Fairfield Branch of the Burr Family. In 2019, the Aaron Burr Association placed a memorial headstone, acknowledging his parentage, on the gravesite of John Pierre Burr at Eden Cemetery in Pennsylvania.