FAYETTEVILLE — "Civil Rights Seekers: The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same" will be presented from 3-4:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2003, in the Leflar Law Center Courtroom at the University of Arkansas School of Law as part of Black History Month activities.

The Hartman Hotz Lectures Series in Law and Liberal Arts is sponsoring the presentation which features Professor Ann Juergens, author of "Lena Olive Smith, A Minnesota Civil Rights Pioneer," Hannibal B. Johnson, a Tulsa, Okla., attorney and author of "Black Wall Street and Acres of Aspiration" and Professor Judith Kilpatrick of the University of Arkansas School of Law, author of "(Extra)Ordinary Men: African-American Lawyers and Civil Rights in Arkansas Before 1950."

The panel will discuss the battle for equality African Americans have faced from the days of slavery and how similar battles still are being fought today. They will demonstrate their conclusions by focusing on the lives and work of African-American attorneys Lena Olive Smith, who practiced in Minneapolis, and Wiley Austin Branton whose practice began in Pine Bluff, Ark., and later led to Washington, D.C.

Juergens has been a professor of law at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn., since 1994. She received her Juris Doctor degree in 1976 from the University of Minnesota Law School and her A.B. degree from Harvard University in 1973 where she was the features editor of the Harvard Crimson in 1972.

A 1981 alumnus of the University of Arkansas with a bachelor's of arts degree, Johnson's honors at the school included receiving the Martin Luther King Scholar's Award and being named Who's Who Among American College and University Students. He received the Earl Warren Legal Training Scholarship at Harvard Law School where he received his J.D. degree in 1984.

Kilpatrick, associate professor of law, has been at the University of Arkansas since 1994. Her teaching includes lawyering skills and professional responsibility with service work supporting interests in curriculum planning and professionalism. She received her J.D. in 1975 from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and her J.S.D. in 1999 from Columbia University in New York.

The University of Arkansas Harman Hotz Lectures in Law and Liberal Arts were established by Dr. and Mrs. Palmer Hotz of Foster City, Calif., to honor the memory of his brother, Hartman Hotz, a graduate of the University of Arkansas College of Arts and Sciences and later a faculty member of the University of Arkansas School of Law. As specified in the granting document, the purpose of the lectures is to "provide an impetus to original thought." The lectures are to be "the product of knowledgeable individuals and of challenging minds."

Distinguished speakers who have participated in the series include Chief Justice Warren Burger, Daisy Bates and Dr. Joycelyn Elders.