Black at Berkeley Law Display Honors Legacy, Leadership, Community

Group posing in front of installation
(From left) 3L Davanna Howell-McFarlane, Gia White, Takiyah Jackson, 2L Nailah Edmead, and 2L Jeffrey Greer IV played key roles in bringing the Black at Berkeley Law display to life. Photo by Darius Riley

A new display project called Black at Berkeley Law: Honoring the Past, Shaping the Future was installed recently on the law school’s first floor. Celebrating the enduring legacy, leadership, and community of Berkeley Law’s Black students, scholars, and advocates, it features Walter A. Gordon 1922, the school’s first Black graduate; Annie Virginia Stephens Coker 1929, the first Black woman to graduate from Berkeley Law and practice law in California; and Christopher Edley Jr., the school’s first Black dean. The display also highlights the student-led organizations Law Students of African Descent and the Berkeley Journal of Black Law & Policy, which developed the project with Black Lives at Cal.