Barbara Y. Phillips
Barbara Y. Phillips, a social justice feminist, authored the essay Imagine and Create the Third Reconstruction for the anthology The Struggle in the South Continues (ed. Kent Spriggs, University Press of Florida forthcoming) and three essays appearing in Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers: Reflections from the Deep South, 1964-1980 (ed. Kent Spriggs, University Press of Florida 2017). She was recently an Adjunct Professor at the University of Mississippi Law School and formerly a Ford Foundation Program Officer in the Peace and Social Justice Program responsible for grant-making nationally and globally related to women’s rights. Prior to joining the foundation, she was an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, Spaeth Fellow at Stanford Law School, partner in the San Francisco law firm Rosen and Phillips, and civil rights litigator specializing in voting rights. She was a community organizer prior to attending law school.
Her numerous academic articles on democracy and political participation include Joaquin Avila: Voting Rights Gladiator, 18 Seattle Journal for Social Justice 1, 21 (Summer 2019); How a Targeted Triggering Approach Can Repair the Voting Rights Act: Congress Can Eliminate the Blight of Voting Discrimination Once and For All, Voting Rights Symposium, 85 Miss. L.J. 6, 1163 (2017) (co-authored}; The Gift of Hopwood: Diversity and the Fife and Drum March Back to the 19th Century, 34 Ga. L. Rev. 291 (Fall 1999) .
She was honored by the Mississippi Center for Justice in 2022 as a Champion of Justice.
Her creative non-fiction has been published in The New York Times; Southern Cultures; The Citron Review; 2023 Anthology Aunt Chloe: A Journal of Artful Candor and others.
Her education includes: B.A. Macalester College; J.D., Northwestern University School of Law; J.S.M., Stanford Law School.
Read her essay, "How I Became a Civil Rights Lawyer" [pdf]