February is Black History Month, and the Muse Law Library is proud to present our celebration of Black achievement in the law. Here you will find the full collection of the 47 slides exhibited throughout the Library this month, each one documenting a different Black trailblazer or icon. The people featured here all displayed resounding courage and perseverance as they struggled against injustices and abuses at the hands of an oppressive, bigoted system. You will find lawyers and judges, writers and artists, and civil rights activists all connected by the common thread of a dedication to racial justice.
Some names you may recognize, like Frederick Douglass, who escaped the horrors of slavery to become a champion of abolition; Thurgood Marshall, who fought against school segregation and won; and Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi, who founded the Black Lives Matter movement to protest police brutality and discrimination toward Black people. Others include Richmond-based lawyers and activists, like Oliver White Hill, a civil rights attorney from Richmond who successfully challenged the “separate but equal” doctrine and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts; and Arthur Ashe, the tennis star and activist whose monument stands as the only one remaining on Richmond’s notorious Monument Avenue. Still others presented here are only recently being credited with their contributions to history, like mathematician Katherine Johnson, whose calculations were critical to NASA’s first manned space missions; and Henrietta Lacks, whose stolen cancer cells helped develop major scientific and medical breakthroughs.
We at the University of Richmond’s Muse Law Library acknowledge Richmond’s unique history of racism—as a major port of entry on the slave trade, as the capitol of the Confederacy, and as the flashpoint in the fight against racist monuments. But through the darkest chapters of Richmond’s —and America’s— history, there have always been beacons of hope. We have presented only a few of many here.
Our story is still being written everyday by the people who fight racial injustice, discrimination, hatred, and violence. At the Law Library we actively assert a philosophy of anti-racism and seek to promote diversity and inclusion in all we do. Let us all find inspiration in the words of Martin Luther King, which are emblazoned on the wall of the Law School lobby: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” We hope this presentation of Black achievement in honor of Black History Month can serve as a small reminder of this truth.
Image detail:
Butler, B. 2017. Garden. [quilt].
Special thanks to Carl Hamm and Alex Clay Hutchings for their hard work on this presentation.