Wayne State University Opens Judge Damon J. Keith Civil Rights Center

BY DAVID JESSE

DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

5:24 PM, Oct. 19, 2011 

Gesturing to words inscribed above the entrance to the new Wayne State University civil rights center named for him, Damon J. Keith, a longtime judge and civil rights activist, said his whole life could be summed up by the words.

“Democracy dies behind closed doors,” reads the quotation, taken from one of his rulings. Keith is currently a justice on the U.S. Court of Appeals, and the quotation comes from a ruling in a case brought by the Detroit Free Press against the Bush administration which wanted closed door deportation hearings.

Judge Keith, a WSU law school graduate, toured the new center today with a gaggle of media and local dignitaries. He said he lived his life pressing for the rights of those oppressed by decisions made behind closed doors or denied access to the room.

“I’m humbled by the building,” Keith said of the new center. “I’ve been walking on floors I did not scrub. I hope this center will continue to allow, through this legacy, people who scrub floors to walk on them. It’s important to give everybody an opportunity … to give everything they can with their God-given talent.”

The two-story, 10,000-square-foot center building features classrooms, conference rooms, student organization space and a lecture hall.

As visitors enter the building, attached to the law school, a large portrait of Keith greets them. To the left is an exhibit tracing the nation’s civil rights history, including pictures of Keith with various civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr… Read more here.