Michelle Alexander, a well-known civil rights advocate and associate professor of law at Ohio State University, delivered the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy's (CSRD) inaugural Gerald Gill Keynote Lecture in Cohen Auditorium last night.

Alexander began her lecture by denouncing America's modern-day incarceration system, a topic which she discusses in her bestselling book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness."

"I know a lot of people want to say that there is nothing as horrible as slavery or Jim Crow that exists today," she said. "What I firmly believe is that today - hundreds of years later in this modern, supposedly advanced world - there are people struggling in our midst, lynched by a system that's profoundly unjust and laced with racism, greed, power and control."

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