(AP Photo)
The class of 2021 at Harvard Law School has over 60 Black students and it has come to be known as the largest class for Black law candidates in the history of this educational institution.
In order to showcase their excellence, these students created the hashtag #BlackatHarvardLaw with a social media campaign.
With this initiative, the freshman class is aiming to mark its historic presence on the campus, and also encouraging the next generation lawyers from the Black community to do the same.
Armani Madison, Daniel Oyolu, Shane Fowler, and Sarah Rutherford sat down in an interview in order to discuss their purpose for the campaign. They also spoke about their collective experiences as students that were attending Harvard Law.
Oyulu said that he found this campaign so important because of the fact that there were so many people who had invested in their success, and encouraged and inspired them to set their goals high. For all of these reasons, these students believed that they needed to set the record straight for all the people who were going to follow their footsteps.
Rutherford said that this campaign was intended to be strategically aligned with Harvard’s annual event series. This event particularly caters to all the new students at Harvard along with prospective intakes. With the help of this campaign, Black law candidates will be able to safely consider applying at Harvard since they will have the support of the Black community currently studying and making a mark at the institution.
The cofounders of the campaign said that when they had begun posting their campaign on social media or their personal networks, parents were tagging their kids on the posts and commenting, “This could be you.” Even though this may seem like a small statement, it was very motivating for everyone involved in the campaign as they knew that their journey will be able to inspire so many more Black students.
The Harvard Law School experience is known to bring about a slew of challenges for Black people, but this batch of Law students continues to display unwavering resilience. The students are confident about their success even though the odds have always been stacked against people of color.
