Mary Ann Shadd Cary is often known at Howard as its first female law student and one of the first Black women to earn a law degree nationwide. However, many miss the fact that she was a publisher, journalist, educator, and activist who stood tall alongside well-known contemporaries of the male-dominated abolitionist movement, and predominantly white women’s suffrage movement, such as Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

After serving in a segregated Army in World War II, Damon Keith enrolled at the Howard University School of Law. Working with mentors such as Thurgood Marshall and Spotswood Robinson III, Keith graduated from Howard Law with the praise of his revered instructors, which he claims was “the proudest moment in his academic life.”

Pauli Murray (J.D. ’44, H. ’17) is a figure of monumental importance who, at least in the public consciousness, for so long languished in relative obscurity. However, in recent years, Murray has been receiving a long-overdue revival and much-deserved recognition.

Patricia Roberts Harris (B.A. ’45) never let a glass ceiling hold her back. Widely known for being the first African American woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, Roberts Harris was President Jimmy Carter’s U.S. Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the 1970s and later Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, just a few of the firsts she accomplished in her illustrious career.

After receiving a Juris Doctor from Howard's School of Law in 1960, Vernon Jordan started his civil rights career. Most notably, as a Georgia native, he was a part of a team of lawyers that desegregated the University of Georgia.