2004-06 Scholar-in-Residence

Professor Evelyn Wilson

The LBF selected Professor Evelyn Wilson as the 2004-2006 S-I-R recipient. Her project will look at the Louisiana Supreme Court in reconstruction from 1865 to1880.

Born in West Virginia and raised in New York, Professor Wilson received a B.A. from Oberlin College in Ohio, a M.S. from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City and a J.D. from Louisiana State University, Paul M. Hebert Law Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She also received a certificate in International and Comparative Law from a University of San Diego summer program held in Guadalajara, Mexico and a Financial Planning Designation from the College of Financial Planning in Denver, Colorado.

Professor Wilson worked in city and state government positions in New York, in Taxation and Securities in Lake Charles, Louisiana and in the Office of General Counsel at Exxon in Houston, Texas. She clerked for Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice John A. Dixon, Jr. and practiced law with the firm of Losavio and Weinstein in Baton Rouge. In 1986 Professor Wilson began teaching at Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge. She also spent a year teaching at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia.

Released this summer, Professor Wilson’s most recent work is a biography of Charles Hatfield, Jr. The enlightening story of the desegregation of Louisiana’s public law school traces Hatfield’s genealogy against Louisiana history from 1817 to 2002.

Professor Wilson credits Professors George Pugh and Lucy McGough of LSU as being her inspiration. She studied Federal Courts with Professor Pugh and now teaches that subject at Southern. She also studied Trusts and Estates with Professor McGough and admired the way the professor balanced teaching, family, writing and contributing to the law, making the “adventure seem possible.”

Professor Wilson enjoys learning, reading and listening to people tell their stories. She travels locally and internationally and will visit Lithuania later this year.

Professor Wilson is married to Charles A Shropshire, the first African-American District Attorney in Louisiana. She has two sons, Charles II, and Jeremy.