Event Information

Randall Dong is the Legal Director of Disability Rights South Carolina.  A graduate of Mississippi State University and the University of Virginia School of Law, he has worked in Columbia for over 30 years in private practice, state government, and since 2020, at DRSC.  He is a member of the South Carolina Bar, the Richland County Bar Association, and the South Carolina Association for Justice.  He has been a contributing author to South Carolina Administrative Practice and Procedure (3d ed., SC Bar CLE Div. 2013); South Carolina Damages (2d ed., SC Bar CLE Div. 2009); and the Annual Survey of State Class Action Law (ABA Section of Litigation, 1999-present), which has been reprinted annually in Newberg and Rubenstein on Class Actions (Thomson Reuters) since 2002. 

Kathleen McDaniel graduated from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 2007 and was admitted to the practice of law in South Carolina in 2007. She is a member of the South Carolina where she served in the House of Delegates and the Richland County Bar. Her practice areas include government law, environmental law, land use and  zoning and general litigation.  She has served on the Richland County Planning Commission and volunteers for several community organizations. 

A certified specialist in labor and employment law, Nekki Shutt has been involved in the employment / human resources field for more than 35 years, beginning with her work in the human resources department of a publicly-traded property and casualty insurance company. Nekki eventually became the company’s corporate recruiter, responsible for hiring approximately 225 employees on an annual basis as well as managing its temporary workforce. This is her 29^th year practicing law. 

While Nekki earned her juris doctor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, she worked as a graduate assistant in what is now the Master’s in Human Resources Program at the USC Darla Moore School of Business. She also clerked for the law firm that represented the insurer where she had previously been employed. Since then, Nekki has built on her human resources experience and developed a civil litigation practice with an emphasis on employee benefits (ERISA) and employment law. From 2000 to 2005, she also was an adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, teaching a course for third-year law students entitled “Diversity and the Law,” emphasizing social justice issues involving race, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, and the poor.  More than six years ago, Nekki, Malissa Burnette, and Kathleen McDaniel founded Burnette Shutt & McDaniel, PA, a progressive law firm with employment law, civil rights, and civil litigation as its focus.  Notably, the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law recently selected their law firm as the recipient of 2024 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Distinguished Service Award. 

                                    Nekki frequently has received professional recognition and honors. She is secretary of the SC Bar’s Board of Governors and in the House of Delegates.  She chaired the SC Bar’s Labor and Employment Section in 2010, and has served on its  executive  committee for 15 plus years.  For the past five years, she has been named “Lawyer of the Year” in ERISA Litigation by peers through Best Lawyers.  She was the 2018 Recipient of the Civic Star Award from the Richland County Bar Association. She was a 2016 honoree by South Carolina Lawyers Weekly for Leadership in the Law. The University of South Carolina School of Law Alumni Association awarded her the James Petigru Compleat Lawyer Award, Silver Medallion in 2005. Her peers have selected her for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® 2010 to present in the field of labor and employment law. She’s also continuously educates others in her field through her writing and seminar presentations like “Modern Family I and II” on protecting LGBT clients, “Against the Wind: a history of the civil rights movement in South Carolina as told through case law and testimony,” and 10 years of the annual Fundamentals of Employment Law in South Carolina, one of the SC Bar’s Essential Series. Nekki authored the ERISA chapters in the Labor and Employment Law for South Carolina Lawyer 2007, 2011, 2019, and 2024 editions. She also is the author of a chapter on employment law for Paralegal Survival Guide, published by South Carolina Bar Association in 2010. 

Nekki was one of the lead attorneys in Condon v. Haley, the 2014 federal lawsuit which made South Carolina the 35 state to recognize marriage equality in the country.

Orville Vernon Burton is the inaugural Judge Matthew J. Perry Distinguished Chair of History and Professor of Pan-African Studies, Sociology and Anthropology, and Computer Science at Clemson University, and the Director of the Clemson CyberInstitute.  From 2013-2015 he was Creativity Professor of Humanities; in 2016 Burton received the College of Architecture, Art, and Humanities (CAAH) Dean’s Award for “Excellence in Research” and in 2019 the College’s award for “Outstanding Achievement in Service.” In 2018, he received the initial University Research, Scholarship and Artistic Achievement Award. From 2008-2010, he was the Burroughs Distinguished Professor of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University.  He was the founding Director of the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science (I-CHASS) at the University of Illinois, where he is emeritus University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar, University Scholar, and Professor of History, African American Studies, and Sociology.  At the University of Illinois, he continues to chair the I-CHASS advisory board and is also a Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) where he served as Associate Director for Humanities and Social Sciences from 2002-2010.  He serves as Executive Director of the College of Charleston’s Low Country and Atlantic World Program (CLAW). Burton served as vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the Congressional National Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, 2009-2017.  In 2007 the Illinois State legislature honored him with a special resolution for his contributions as a scholar, teacher, and citizen of Illinois. A recognized expert on race relations and the American South, and a leader in Digital Humanities, Burton is often invited to present lectures, conduct workshops, and consult with colleges, universities, and granting agencies.

Burton is a prolific author and scholar (twenty authored or edited books and more than two hundred articles); and author or director of numerous digital humanities projects.  The Age of Lincoln (2007) won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Literary Award for Nonfiction and was selected for Book of the Month Club, History Book Club, and Military Book Club.  One reviewer proclaimed, “If the Civil War era was America's ‘Iliad,’ then historian Orville Vernon Burton is our latest Homer.”  The book was featured at sessions of the annual meetings of African American History and Life Association, the Social Science History Association, the Southern Intellectual History Circle, and the latter was the basis for a forum published in The Journal of the Historical Society. His In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina (1985) was featured at sessions of the Southern Historical Association and the Social Science History Association annual meetings.  The Age of Lincoln and In My Fathers’ House were nominated for Pulitzers.  His most recent authored book, is Penn Center:  A History Preserved (2014); his book with Armand Derfner, Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court will be released May 4, 2021 by the Belknap Press of Harvard University.

Recognized for his teaching, Burton was selected nationwide as the 1999 U.S. Research and Doctoral University Professor of the Year (presented by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education).  In 2004 he received the American Historical Association’s Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Prize.  At the University of Illinois, he won teaching awards at the department, school, college, and campus levels.  He was the recipient of the 2001-2002 Graduate College Outstanding Mentor Award and received the 2006 Campus Award for Excellence in Public Engagement.  He was appointed an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer for 2004-20.

Burton's research and teaching interests are American history, with a particular focus on the American South, including  race relations and community, and the intersection of humanities and social science.  He has served as president of the Southern Historical Association and of the Agricultural History Society.  He was elected to honorary life membership in BrANCH (British American Nineteenth-Century Historians).

Among his honors are fellowships and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pew Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Humanities Center, the U.S. Department of Education, National Park Service, and the Carnegie Foundation.  He was a Pew National Fellow Carnegie Scholar for 2000-2001. He was elected to the Society of American Historians and was one of ten historians selected to contribute to the Presidential Inaugural Portfolio (January 21, 2013) by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.  Burton was elected into the S.C. Academy of Authors in 2015 and in 2017 received the Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities from the South Carolina Humanities Council.