11.14.19 UDC LAW GALA GRAND HYATT WASHINGTON THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT OF UDC LAW! I am delighted to be sharing this evening with you. Our annual gala is the law school’s primary opportunity to raise much needed funding for student scholarships and summer fellowships. Your presence this evening helps to ensure that UDC Law will continue to innovate, inspire, and lead in legal education. As you will read further in the program, tonight we honor four legal legends. My gratitude to the Ogletree family for allowing UDC Law to name an award after Charles J. Ogletree Jr. From this night forward, the Charles J. Ogletree Jr. Champion of Justice Award will be given annually to individuals who are using their platform and position to promote social justice and equality. It is given in recognition of the profound contributions “Tree” made to the cause of justice in this country. I can think of no better people to bestow this honor on than tonight’s awardees – Sherrilyn Ifill and Edgar and Jean Camper Cahn. The remarkable contributions of each are detailed in the pages that follow. As the only public law school in the District of Columbia, and as an HBCU committed to opening the legal profession to groups traditionally underrepresented at the bar, UDC Law trains students to promote justice, value diversity, and interact effectively with people from a range of racial, social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds. Tonight, you will hear from two students who exemplify the rich legacy that is UDC Law as they introduce one of tonight’s awards. In the decades since its founding, UDC Law has successfully graduated thousands of students while providing life-changing legal services to countless low-income District residents. The school has attracted a stellar faculty of experienced attorneys and scholars. Our staff is multi-talented and deeply committed to the mission. And, our graduates are thriving as attorneys at all levels of government and in practice, as judges, and as law school deans and professors in the Washington region and beyond. As former Attorney General Eric Holder said at last year’s UDC Law Gala, “We need lawyers trained in the UDC Law model now more than ever.” Thank you for your support of our remarkable institution. With warmest regards, Renée McDonald Hutchins TONIGHT’S EVENTS FPO CHARLES J. OGLETREE, JR. Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. is a prominent legal theorist who has earned an international reputation for taking a hard look at complex issues of law. Over his five-decades-long career, he has worked to secure for all the equal rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Professor Ogletree is the Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and the Founder and former Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. He once also served as the director for Harvard Law’s clinical programs. Over the course of his illustrious career, he has authored several ground breaking books on race and justice including The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Race, Class, and Crime in America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education (W.W. Norton & Company, 2004). Professor Ogletree earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees with distinction from Stanford University, where he was Phi Beta Kappa. He holds his law degree from Harvard Law School. Professor Ogletree began his legal career at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, gaining a reputation for a formidable courtroom presence. While in the District, Professor Ogletree also began his now decades-long connection to the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law. Professor Ogletree taught at UDC Law’s predecessor institution (Antioch Law School). He also served as a member of the University of the District of Columbia Board of Trustees from 1999 through 2006. In 2000, he was elected Chairman of the Board, and held the position until his departure. As an advocate for improving educational opportunities for students in need, he has established scholarships at both the undergraduate campus and at the law school. He has also been a frequent participant or speaker at law school events, including a 50th Anniversary celebration of Brown v. Bd. of Education with Dorothy Height, Randall Robinson, and others. Professor Ogletree is a past recipient of the prestigious ABA Spirit of Excellence Award; has been named as one of the 50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal; and has been named by Ebony Magazine as one of the 100+ Most Influential Black Americans for the past 13 years. He was the recipient of the first ever Rosa Parks Civil Rights Award given by the City of Boston; the Hugo A. Bedau Award given by the Massachusetts Anti-Death Penalty Coalition; and Morehouse College’s Gandhi, King, Ikeda Community Builders Prize. He has also received honorary doctorates from several universities and colleges including Cambridge College, Wilberforce University, the University of Miami, the New England School of Law, Lincoln College, Tougaloo College, Mount Holyoke College and Amherst College. About the Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. Champion of Justice Award The Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. Champion of Justice Award is presented annually to individuals who are using their position and platform to promote social justice and equality throughout the United States and abroad. Recipients of the award exemplify the same values embodied by Professor Ogletree and UDC Law’s commitment to public service, diversity, and social justice. ELAINE JONES From 1993 to 2004, Elaine R. Jones served as the President and Director-Counsel of LDF, and the first woman to do so. She brought with her vast experience as a litigator and civil rights activist, as well as a passion for fairness and equality that dates back to her childhood. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Ms. Jones learned about the realities of racism and the importance of idealism from her mother, a college-educated school teacher, and her father, a Pullman porter and a member of the nation’s first black trade union. From the age of eight, she knew she wanted to be a lawyer and to commit her life to the pursuit of equal justice. After graduating with honors in political science from Howard University, Ms. Jones joined the Peace Corps and became one of the first African Americans to serve in Turkey. This began a long series of “firsts” in her career. She later became the first black woman to graduate from the University of Virginia School of Law, and subsequently the first African American to serve on the Board of Governors of the American Bar Association. Ms. Jones was invited to join one of Wall Street’s most prestigious firms after her graduation in 1970. She turned it down to pursue the goal she had chosen in her youth, and instead joined the Legal Defense Fund’s staff. In her early years at LDF, Ms. Jones continued to blaze trails, becoming one of the first African American women to defend death row inmates. Only two years out of law school, she was counsel of record in Furman v. Georgia, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that abolished the death penalty in 37 states. During this period, she also argued numerous employment discrimination cases, including class actions against some of the nation’s largest employers. UDC LAW PRESENTERS NINA EGBUTA Nina Egbuta is a first generation Nigerian- American, born and raised in New York. She attended college at the University at Albany (SUNY) (c/o 2014) and majored in Political Science, with a minor in Criminal Justice and a concentration in Public Law. After college, Nina worked as a paralegal in the New York State legislature, and then at the Legal-Aid Society, Juvenile Rights Practice in Bronx, NY. She is currently a second-year law student at UDC David A. Clarke School of Law and the President of the Black law Students Association. After graduation, she intends on practicing in the District of Columbia and Maryland. LAFONDA WILLIS The Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. Champion of Justice Award is presented annually to individuals who are using their position and platform to promote social justice and equality throughout the United States and abroad. Recipients of the award exemplify the same values embodied by Professor Ogletree and UDC Law’s commitment to public service, diversity, and social justice. The Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. Champion of Justice Award is presented annually to individuals who are using their position and platform to promote social justice and equality throughout the United States and abroad. Recipients of the award exemplify the same values embodied by Professor Ogletree and UDC Law’s commitment to public service, diversity, and social justice. JEAN CAMPER & EDGAR CAHN Edgar and Jean Camper Cahn co-founded the Antioch School of Law, UDC David A. Clarke School of Law’s predecessor and the first law school in the United States to educate law students primarily through clinical training in legal services to the poor. Together they served as co-deans from 1971 to 1980. In 1997, they received the Association of American Law School’s William Pincus Clinical Award for “Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Legal Education.” In 2009, they received the National Legal Aid and Defender Association’s Charles Dorsey Award for extraordinary and dedicated service to the equal justice community and to organizations that promote expanding and improving access to justice for low-income people. The Cahns’ insistence that the poor be guaranteed legal counsel in civil cases was indeed new and radical.