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With roots firmly grounded in the Civil Rights Moment, Professor Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, of both UCLA Law and Columbia Law School, is one of the premier intellectuals and top law professors in the country.
Crenshaw, 45, lives in Harlem--well, part of the time; she splits herself between New York and Los Angeles where she holds teaching positions at two top-notch universities.
As a scholar, Crenshaw has written extensively on the subject of gender and race and their cross sections, authoring two major works: "Critical Race Theory" and "Words That Wound." She is currently working on a third book, a compilation of essays and other writings to be released in book form.
Crenshaw, whose parents were both teachers, was one of two children raised in the small town of Canton, Ohio, during the last vestiges of the Civil Rights Movement and the burgeoning Black Power movement.
Crenshaw said her parents were activists in their own right.
"My father spearhead integrating public housing," which had been customarily segregated in Ohio, but not legally required. Crenshaw said her mother told her stories of trying to integrate a neighborhood pool as a child at the encouragement of her grandmother. She calls her mother "a warrior since the age of three," and Crenshaw has apparently adopted that soldier's will and more.
Her interest in law took shape after her father passed on when she was only 10. At the time, her father was...