KU law professor earns $50,000 award

Stacy Leeds, a professor of law at Kansas University and director of the school’s Tribal Law and Government Center, is one of four academics nationwide to be named a Fletcher Fellow – an honor that comes with a $50,000 stipend for work that contributes to improving racial equality in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

Leeds plans to produce a book, “Ties that Bind: Freedmen Citizenship and the Cherokee Nation,” about the Cherokee freedmen, the slaves held by the Cherokee Nation until the 1860s, and their descendants.

While a justice on the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court, Leeds authored the majority opinion in Allen v. Cherokee Nation, a judicial decision that upheld the tribal citizenship rights of the “freedmen” and is considered a decision parallel to Brown v. Board.

Leeds joined the KU law faculty in 2003 after serving as assistant professor and director of the Northern Plains Indian Law Center at the University of North Dakota School of Law.