Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Black History Month
I run for fun, fitness and thinking time. While running the other day, in honor of Black History month, I was challenging myself to come up with a list of "Great Black Boalties." I also considered doing some serious googling to come up with a list of "Great Black Cal alumni." Of course, "great" is a sort of flexible criterion... and I could list a lot of people with whom I went to school. But I think I'm going for, you know, like broadly great, state-wide or national -- or at least well known. Your suggestions welcomed and encouraged.
Great Black Boalties
Great Black Boalties
- Judge Thelton Henderson (BA, JD, so we forgive his later ties to Stanfurd)
- Eva Patterson
- Robert Westley
In making this list, I want to honor the far-reaching contributions of Black Cal and Boalt alumns, but I also want to seriously challenge Cal and Boalt's records for admission, recrutiment and retention of amazing Black students. So look here in the future for data on those issues. I'd love to get my hands on data of Black applicants who were denied admission to Boalt or Cal who later went on to amazingness benefiting other schools. I remember Matt Gonzalez telling newly enrolled graduate students at Cal that the reason he went to Stanfurd for law school rather than Boalt is Boalt didn't admit him. Certainly Cal and Boalt are missing opportunties like this all the time.
