Professor, Harvard Law School
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photo by steed media service
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Harvard
Law School professor Charles Ogletree can be called many things. The
fact that Ogletree, an African American, taught both Barack and
Michelle Obama when they were law students at the Cambridge, Mass.,
institution can be called fantastic luck, great fortune or serendipity.
Ogletree would rather be called immensely proud.
Barack and Michelle made deep impressions on Ogletree, the tenured
Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard. “Michelle really impressed
me. She was a great student, but she was also very committed to the
community. She worked at the Legal Aid bureau. She represented poor
families in civil legal services – people who were being evicted from
their homes and things of that nature. So I knew about her values and
service,” Ogletree says. “She said, ‘Tree’ – because that’s what my law
students call me – ‘my father has given me … the opportunity to make
a difference in lives. So I’m going to use my talents to make sure that
I do everything I can to help others.’ She left Harvard Law School, and
she kept her promise to her father [when she] went back to the South
Side of Chicago.”
“Barack came in 1988, and he was smart, quiet, but incredibly
resourceful,” Ogletree continues. “He was the smartest in his class. He
was elected the first black president, not just the first black editor
of the Law Review, because there are 40 editors. But the first black
president, which meant he was in charge of the entire intellectual
property of Harvard Law School, in terms of scholarships for faculty.
And no African American in the history of Harvard had ever held that
position.”
Ogletree says Obama sowed the seeds of his presidential victory by what
he chose to do after he left law school. “Barack left Harvard Law
School, as he promised his mother and [he] went to back the South Side
of Chicago. So instead of going to make money and being famous, they
went back to help the next generation to help them and lift them up,”
Ogletree says. “They are, to me, prime examples of people who had much
and used their opportunities to help others.” –terry shropshire
