EMANCIPATION: BLACK LAWYERS

One may well wonder whether, given the current exorbitant costs of contemporary undergraduate college educations, a reversion in education may be forthcoming, or may be underway, in which, certain students may be able to forego college altogether; and enter the graduate school of choice directly. These 2018 thoughts were inspired by multiple news reports of young students foregoing high school for college courses. If high school, why not college too? I, for one, am sure that I could have gone from high school directly into law school. Additional impetus for this surmise arises from a reading in the chapter, "Black Students in the Law Schools," in EMANCIPATION THE MAKING OF THE BLACK LAWYER 1844-1944, by J. Clay Smith, Jr.(1993). Therein my much beloved Howard Law School property professor writes: "At Howard, the students were often informed and reminded of Professor Ridley's admonition that 'the study and most of the practice of law is purely intellectual [and] that law is a jealous mistress.' Unlike schools such as Harvard and Yale, Howard 's law school was still admitting some students with a high school education when Professor [Charles Hamilton] Houston joined the faculty in 1924. Yet the law school had progressed with distinction in spite of the absence of rigid admission requirements, and so had its graduates. "To gain accreditation, the challenge for Howard University was not to remake the law school. After all, Howard lawyers had broken legal ground in a number of states. They had also gained substantial respect in both the black and white worlds with their legal training. Yet, because of racism, the law school remained outside the legal academy represented by the accrediting agencies of the Association of American Law Schools and the American Bar Association. The challenge facing Howard was to transform the law school into a form acceptable to the accreditation agency that would guarantee its survival. The challenge fell to Professor Charles Hamilton Houston." P.48.