The New Professionals

Abstract

Momentarily setting aside their studies, the six black law students gathered around a table at Harkness Commons, the student dining hall and campus center of the Harvard Law School (HLS). Four were graduates of prestigious private eastern collegesBennington, Columbia, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley. Another had graduated from the University of Houston. last had gone to Oakwood College, a small black church-affiliated institution in Alabama. Intelligent, articulate, ambitious, they spoke of their matriculation at Harvard Law School and of their future as lawyers with a unanimity that bridged the considerable differences of their social and economic backgrounds. We have a mission hereto learn how the system works and bring our skills back to the community. The law school hasn't met my expectations. It perpetuates the status quo because most of the faculty advocate a very conservative approach to the law. demand much more from the law in terms of addressing and solving social ills. We should learn to make this environment work for us. It's not going to do us any good to reject the ways of the white world. We've got to learn how to swim in that sea. I don't feel the need to justify being here. do feel the need to justify what do when leave. Such comments may surprise those who accept the common wisdom that today's professional school students are more pragmatic than their predecessors of the late 1960s and early 1970s. As that word is currently and fashionably used it implies that they are less militant, less threatening; that, enamored as their white peers of well-paying jobs in corporate America, they shun any identification with the black masses-indeed, with anything that could derail their determined quest for individual advancement. masses be damned. Class consciousness, not black co sciousness, reigns supreme. That is the widespread impression, borne out by current books, magazine articles, and news stories. However, in interviews with a score of black students and recent graduates of Harvard's Law and Medical Schools found just the opposite. Despite differences in background, beliefs, and goals, to a person they expressed a critical appreciation for the benefits of a Harvard education and coupled their personal ambitions with a continually spoken commitment to advancing the race. George Valentine, who graduated in June of this year, was one of them. Valentine, who wants to specialize in labor law, was born in Mississippi and attended Oakwood College. I come from a poor family, he said matter-of-factly. father died when was very young. My mother worked three jobs to give me opportunities the average kid in our neighborhood didn't have. Because of the sacrifices she and other people made for me do feel an obligation to help out, not only financially but by providing some leadership to the black community, such as management assistance to minority businesses. Shirley Wilcher, a law school senior from Boston via Mount Holyoke, has in mind a career alternating between public service and private practice, like Patricia Roberts Harris. Charles J. Hamilton, Jr., an alumnus of Harvard College, the MIT graduate school, and Harvard Law School and now an attorney in private practice, foresees the day when black lawyers will be to follow the example of a Bill [William T.] Coleman, the former secretary of transportation who helped devise the legal strategy that led to the Brown decision. You have to be impressed by [Coleman's] ability to combine his work as a top partner in a major law firm with his having taken on cases for the Legal Defense Fund, Hamilton remarked. I think blacks in private firms increasingly are going to be able to do that pursue a professional career where their growth is in no way limited by the type of work they do, and at the same time, bring the resources of their LEE DANIELS is a reporter for the New York Times, and formerly served on the editorial board of the Washington Post. His article on the Bakke case appeared in the October 1977 issue of Change.