Danielle Holley speaking in the UH Black History Month lecture at the John M. O’Quinn Law Building, Tuesday, February 10, 2026, in Houston, Texas | Luis Diego Gonzalez/The Cougar
On Feb. 10, Dean Leonard Baynes and Mount Holyoke College President Danielle Holley presented their lecture titled “The Past, Present, and Future of Civil Rights Lawyering” at the UH Law Center.
The lecture commemorated Black History Month and informed attendees about the evolution of African American lawyers, both nationally and in Texas. The lecture emphasized the importance of all minorities being involved in public policy and law.
“America is full of different types of races, ethnicities and cultures, so it’s super important that we have laws and policies that cater not to just one group, but to all groups,” said political science freshman Patricia Koloko.
Baynes opened the lecture by retelling the stories of lawyers Macon B. Allen and Charlotte Ray, the first Black male and female lawyers in the U.S.
“What you find about a lot of the early African American lawyers is that they were not able to practice,” Baynes said. “Lawyers like Macon B. Allen probably only became a lawyer because they apprenticed with someone, and during the 1840s, finding someone who would apprentice Black people was incredibly hard, if not impossible.”
Holley highlighted early Black civil rights advocates, including Heman Marion Sweatt and Thurgood Marshall. In 1946, Sweatt applied to the University of Texas School of Law.
Sweatt met every academic requirement and wanted to study law. He wanted to be of benefit to his state, but was denied entry solely because of his race, Holley said.
The university attempted to build a separate law school for Sweatt to attend in Houston. In response, Sweatt, supported by Marshall and other members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People legal defense fund, filed a lawsuit against the university’s then-president.
The case was taken to the Supreme Court, where the justices unanimously ruled in favor of Sweatt and ordered that he be able to attend UT’s law school.
“Law school was, and it remains, the gateway to judgeships, policymaking, economic security and the idea of who gets to interpret the Constitution rather than merely live under the Constitution,” Holley said.
Students felt thankful for the work and progress of Black civil rights lawyers.
“I can only be so grateful to the lawyers and activists that came before because I’m a mixed-race person, so I probably wouldn’t even exist if we were in a certain era still,” said computer information systems senior Alisa Akaya.
Attendees agreed that civil rights lawyering is especially important today, considering the current scenarios in the real world.
“Our Constitution is based on liberty and freedom,” Koloko said. “We must fight to make sure that we’re following that pathway our Founding Fathers have for us, no matter where you come from.”
Holley discussed the current challenges aspiring Black lawyers face, including being more likely to carry student debt, be first-generation students, experience isolation and be underrepresented.
“Are Black students and graduates able to form networks, sponsorships or gets sponsors where we work? Are we able to be seen as lawyers who are identified with prestige? Do we have institutional support in the places that we work?” Holley said. “All of that can really impact the ability for us to turn people who are interested in being lawyers into law students and then turning those law students into licensed lawyers.”
Holley explained it is also difficult for Black law students to become civil rights lawyers, since racial inequality in today’s political climate is much more legally sophisticated than it was during the segregation era.
“Discrimination is often reframed as neutrality and sometimes discrimination, as we heard from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Justice, is reframed as discrimination against white Americans,” Holley said.
Holley said the future of Black civil rights lawyers will require moral clarity, legal imagination, institutional courage, solidarity and stamina.
“Civil rights is not a sprint. This is a really long-term problem that we have to solve,” Holley said. “We have to figure out how the Constitution of the United States, our statutes, our regulations, our state constitutions and state regulations support a world in which we can all believe that it is made for us?”
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