the president of the Cook County Bar
Association (CCBA) and became the
first African American bankruptcy
judge in Chicago in 1968. Poindexter
Orr was also an officer of the CCBA.
Keys was an officer of the Chicago
branch of the NAACP by the start of
WorldWar II and was a prominent
lawyer, featuring in news stories
concerning civil rights and other civil
and criminal litigation in Chicago; he
was also said to be a good friend of
the author RichardWright.
When the school reopened
in 1946, African Americans were
among the new students, many
returning from service in the war.
Jean Brooks and James T. Horton
earned their law degrees in 1948 and
Robert H. Holloway and Henry A.
Towles in 1949.
The 1970s brought a dramatic
increase in enrollment at Loyola and
other law schools. At the same
time, students were actively
protesting perceived injustices
in society. At the law school,
African American students, led by
Stephen H. Pugh (BACl ’68, JD ’73),
established a chapter of the Black
American Law Students Association
(BALSA, later renamed BLSA) and
urged the administration to increase
its efforts to attract minority students
to Loyola. The dean and faculty were
sympathetic to their suggestions, but
limited funding from the University
and inadequate physical facilities
hampered the achievement of those
goals at that time.
Marking milestones
A significant milestone was
achieved in 1976 when the law
school hired its first full-time African
American faculty member, Norman
C. Amaker. Amaker had already
distinguished himself as a civil rights
lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense
and Educational Fund, where he
represented parties, including his
friend and colleague Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr., in state and federal courts.
Amaker, who taught at Loyola until
his sudden death in 2000, became
a legend at the law school not only
for his background of civil rights
litigation and the books and articles
he authored, but primarily for his
dedication to mentoring and assisting
law students of every background.
The year after Amaker joined the
law school faculty, another milestone
was reached when Adaku S. Nzeribe,
a Nigerian woman, was admitted
to the law school with advanced
standing. Nzeribe, who received her
JD in 1979, was the first of what later
became a significant number of law
students from Africa and the wider
African diaspora who have joined
the law school for its JD and several
graduate law programs. That outreach
culminated in the hiring of Professor
James Thuo Gathii, from Kenya, as
the law school’s Wing-Tat Lee Chair in
International Law in 2012.
Amaker was instrumental in
establishing the law school’s annual
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture in
1986. That lecture series brought a
wide variety of speakers to the law
school, including then-state senator
Barack Obama in 1999. In 2001-02, an
annual award named for Amaker was
established for presentation at the
King Lecture, with the first recipient
being Professor Neil Williams of the
full-time faculty.
In 1992-93, BLSA established an
award to recognize and honor an
African American graduate of the
law school, to be presented each
year at the organization’s annual
alumni dinner. The first award, named
after Donald L. Hollowell (LLB ’51),
a prominent civil rights lawyer and
the first regional director of the
Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC) in Georgia, was
presented to David H. Coar (JD ’69),
a judge of the United States District
Court in Chicago. (In recent years,
the Amaker award has also been
presented at the BLSA alumni dinner.)
While African American
students participate in all student
activities—publications, interschool
and intraschool competitions, and
cocurricular organizations—they
also participate in interschool
competitions open only to BLSA
members: the Thurgood Marshall
Mock Trial Competition and the
Frederick Douglass Moot Court
Competition. During the current
school year, Loyola’s BLSA teams
were both winners in their regional
competitions and went on to
compete in the national rounds.
After 90 years, African American
alumni and students remain an
integral part of Loyola, and their
desire for the law school to continue
to recruit, enroll, retain, and graduate
other African American candidates
continues unabated—a sentiment
shared by all members of the School
of Law community.
■
Thomas M. Haney
has been a member of
Loyola’s full-time law faculty since 1975. He is
the author of
The First 100 Years,
a book he
wrote in 2009 about the centennial history
of Loyola University Chicago School of Law.
AFRICAN AMERICAN DIVERSITY
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19)
Sylvanus A. Ballard (LLB ’41)
Jean W. Brooks (LLB ’48)
Stephen H. Pugh (BACl ’68, JD ’73) is presented with a plaque of appreciation
by Sally O. Joyce (JD ’94) at a 1994 Midyear Convocation reception.
Professor Norman Amaker (left, with United States Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia in 1997) joined Loyola’s law faculty in 1976.
Poindexter A. Orr (LLB ’35)
20
LOYOLA LAW
SPRING 2015
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