Derek W. Black, a best-selling author and constitutional law professor, will share his insights and research into the attack on the nation’s commitment to public education, from funding to vouchers to charter schools, at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 17, at The Lodge, 424 Goans Ave., Clinton.

Black will be a guest of the Anderson County Democratic Women’s Club at a fund-raiser that will feature the author and the opportunity to purchase his books. All proceeds and donations from the evening will support Anderson County Democratic candidates.

The program, titled “Fighting the Attack on Public Education: A Night of Learning and Giving,” offers an inspiring evening of learning and discussion in support of public education with the author, who spent part of his childhood in Clinton.

His first book, “Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy,” offers a history of the nation’s establishment of a constitutional right to education with an analysis of how that right is being undermined today. His book “makes clear that public education was central to the Founding Fathers’ vision of a new kind of democracy that rests on the consent of the governed,” according to the New York Review of Books.

His second book, “Dangerous Learning: The South’s Long War on Black Literacy,” concludes that “something dangerously reminiscent of the pre-Civil War south is happening in education today,” according to a review by author Nancy MacLean. Black notes that few have valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. His book explains how, once Reconstruction ended, opposition to educating Black children depressed education in the South for Black and white students alike.

Black directs the Constitutional Law Center and is the Ernest F. Hollings Chair in Constitutional Law at the University of South Carolina. He began his career teaching at Howard University School of Law, and before that, he litigated education cases at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

His research focuses on school funding and ensuring equal opportunities for disadvantaged students. His articles have appeared in leading legal journals, and his research is often cited in court opinions and briefs, including in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Tickets are $50 and may be purchased at https://ACDWC-10172025.eventbrite.com or at the door. For more information, email the Democratic Women’s Club at ac-democratic-women@outlook.com.