In Iowa, Where Critical Race Theory is Banned, Retired Justice Teaches Race, Law and Iowa History

Walking through the King Soopers bakery, he approached the display where children were welcome to take a free cookie. Reaching in to select one, a hand suddenly closed on his wrist and the stranger asked what he thought he was doing, accusing him of stealing the complimentary sweet.

Ezekiel Quattlebaum was four years old, the intended consumer for the free treat. Something to munch on while his mom shopped for their family for the week. The white woman remained steadfast, insisting that the Black child she had touched without consent – and who had done nothing wrong – was guilty of a crime for something hundreds of kids across Colorado did every day. Something they were invited to do.

“I wasn’t putting the cookie into my mouth, I was grabbing it. In order to purchase the cookie, I still would have needed to grab it just like I did. This wasn’t just a misunderstanding,” Ezekiel reflected on the moment, twenty years later from his home in Denver.

A graduate of our nation’s first HBCU, Lincoln University, outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Drake University Law School in Des Moines, Iowa, he has returned to his home state to take the bar exam and begin his career.

“There’s more covert racism in Denver than overt racism in Denver,” he said while discussing his earliest memories of experiencing racially-motivated bias in Colorado.

In that Front Range grocery store so many years ago, his mother quickly rushed to his defense. He’d go on to experience more subtle clues of being unwelcome, considered suspicious, and having to navigate being Black in a place where white supremacy is one of the founding principles of his country. Being followed through stores, elementary school teachers teaching that slavery benefited Black Americans, the assumption of drug use or criminal activities.

Becoming a lawyer who could make the system more accessible, breaking the barriers of white-centered respectability and demystifying the processes for self-determination and advocacy, became his goal. He recognized that taking himself out of his comfort zone and learning how communities and cultures change with geography and history would be essential.

Ezekiel Quattlebaum (center) holds his just-received Juris Doctor from Drake University Law Degree aloft following the graduation ceremony with classmates Catherine (left) and Ouli (right). (Photo provided by Ezekiel Quattlebaum)

He studied for and received his undergraduate degree from a historically Black college and says that his eyes were really opened to the differences of opinion, experiences, and expectations within his own community. He learned to appreciate the sense of safety to grow in a space where he didn’t have to explain his own worth, it was anticipated without having to be demonstrated. He learned that integration in the United States didn’t have to mean assimilation, but it would mean that those who had never felt marginalized needed to step out of their comfort zones, too.

So, he headed to a state where teaching Black history through a Black lens had just been made illegal, for his law degree.

In 2021, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed a law banning public schools from teaching the historic and cultural impact of systemic racism or sexism. In a nation founded under principles of systemic exclusion, where women were not afforded the right to vote, own property, or even open a bank account and where Black Americans were first legally recognized as only 3/5 of a human being.Teaching that important context was no longer allowed in the classroom.

MAGA Republicans had recently focused their ire on the scholarly and legal framework of critical race theory. Though decades old in academia, the term had been catapulted into the zeitgeist by then-former President Trump and his allies as an attack on the comfort of white Americans who – they believed – would be better served by not knowing about the rippling legacies of subjugation in this country.

Schools districts in the state have already ended their Black History Month programming as more teachers say they see self-censoring for fear of losing funding in their schools.

At Drake University, a young Black law student found an opportunity to be sure his peers in the law – at least – would graduate and enter their careers with the important historical context of the law with his instructor, retired Iowa Supreme Court Justice Judge Brent Appel.

Judge Brent Appel pauses in his office at Drake University, carefully contemplating the timeline of events connecting Black soldiers’ experiences in the military between the American Civil War and the first World War. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Walking into his office in the faculty bay on the first floor of the University’s law building, there is a sense of a man busy at work. Notes, papers, research are piled on every horizontal surface, neatly arranged for ease of access. Nothing is gathering dust, it’s clear that this office is not one set up to create an intimidating sense of grandeur and accomplishment.

Retired from the bench only because of age limits in Iowa courts, the accomplished jurist could hang accolades on the wall and use his new academic position as an opportunity to reflect his professional success. To project institutional authority. Instead, it is a space inviting collaboration, indicating the amount of work there was still to be done.

Born in Dubuque, Iowa, on the eastern edge of the state just before the state boundary with Illinois, the proud lifelong Iowan could see the need to be sure new attorneys from his state understood legal subjugation in context of American and Iowan history. To be sure that he, a white man, taught it with intention and care, he recruited Quattlebaum to help build a class he called Race, Law, and Iowa History.

Knowing that growth comes quickest in moments of discomfort, the law professor and Iowa historian asked his class to be ready to prepare to be a bit uncomfortable. And to think critically.

“I spent considerable time putting together the material for this course,” Appel says, peering over the piles of notes, dog-eared booked, and the stained well-used coffee mug on his desk. “A lot of questions being asked. We do a survey from historical beginnings, to the present day of how the law resources interact.”

With Ezekiel’s help during weekly, meandering, hours-long conversations, he built the course prepared to introduce completely new information to would-be attorneys. History their schools had omitted or ignored.

“Oh, I never know for sure. One never knows for sure,” the humble professor said in his Des Moines office, when asked if he anticipated measurable impact from teaching this course. “Perhaps one student at a time.”

In Denver, Ezekiel reflected on seeing that impact from one student in his class, the very first time it was taught, through a conversation about football and the Johnny Bright incident while having her own perception of reconstruction and racism were being challenged. She confessed that as an undergrad in Ames, Iowa, she questioned the need of Black clubs or support groups on the campus.

“During this class, she had a revelation. She said ‘wow, with that history, it makes sense why people of color would feel better with a safe space, when an institution has a history of beating or berating them. The whole class saw someone’s eyes just open up, realizing that maybe integration wasn’t perfect, because it fell on Black students to fix white schools.”

Systemic racism and cultural bias didn’t end with integration, nor with sharing water fountains, not even with the election of a Black president. Having her history books recontextualized by the intentional conversation presented by her law professor, with care and kindness, allowed the space for her to reach a new conclusion. To see the work that needs to be done to continue to address the legacy of legal racism in her immediate world.

A Drake University student walks across the pedestrian bridges from The Quads, the housing for first-year students at the college. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellow Scene Magazine)

Judge Appel uses historic moments to highlight moments Iowans led the conversation around legal discrimination, from creating their Constitution to ban the practices of slavery and involuntary servitude (except as a punishment for crime), alongside moments of slow growth or even reversal of thought. He contrasts the Civil War, when Black soldiers became commissioned officers through a military academy erected in Des Moines, and World War Two when Black military members returned from serving their country to separate, but equal, doctrines of segregation.

“I do think, as a general matter, we all need to engage in more direct conversations and communications about the issues across racial lines and generational lines, too,” Judge Appel mused, finishing the private hour-long survey in his office of his semester-long survey course.”I think we make a mistake if we rush off to the merits of a particular controversy too quickly. What is going on underneath here really?”

In Iowa, law students are asked to absorb the full history, step outside of their comfort zone thinking critically, and are welcome to challenge their biases and assumptions in their classroom before they see the court room.

Ezekiel Quattlebaums poses with a classmate, Alli, after first-ever court appearance, with the Drake Clinic, which provides legal aid and representation free of charge to Polk County residents, with attorneys assisted by law students. (Photo provided by Ezekiel Quattlebaum)

Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, and Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival.

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What does resistance & resilience look like in the Heartland of America?

Sometimes it’s a protest outside an ICE detention center. Sometimes it’s a rural nurse explaining how Medicaid cuts will shutter the town hospital. Sometimes, it’s a law professor teaching systemic racism at a University in a state where CRT is banned in public schools.

As Trump’s second term unfolds — and the One Big Beautiful Act guts healthcare, empowers ICE, and reshapes American life — independent journalism is more vital than ever. However, the national press rarely shows up in the places where policy has the most impact.

We do.

These American Crossroads is a collaboration between Vince Chandler, Emmy-nominated visual journalist, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s only independent newsroom.

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