BLACK HISTORY APPRECIATION
I am sending an email of gratitude and congratulations on a wonderful article by Jeri Zeder [“Black History at BC Law,” Summer 2024]. It was an amazing and wonderfully thought-out insight into Black history at BC. Thank you for taking on this task and doing a tremendous job.
—Ashley Walters ’25, Somerville, MA
“Black History at BC Law’’ was a walk down memory lane for me, as I know many of the BC former students pictured on the cover. Arriving on the Chestnut Hill campus in the fall of ’72, I was an early recipient of BC’s opportunity for legal study, which I’ve never regretted. A special thanks to Dean Richard “Dick” Huber for his encouragement and support for students, and to Professor Ruth-Arlene Howe ’74 for her dedication and commitment to BLSA and BAN.
The picture of students on the lawn [inside the magazine] was taken during a picnic that I organized in 1975 at Chapel Hill-Chauncy Hall School in Waltham, MA, where I worked as Resident Head during law school.
—Lawrence (“Larry”) Johnson ’75, St. Louis, MO
What a wonderful, fascinating article. I learned so much.
—Mary Haskell ’78, Lexington, MA
IN PRAISE OF JUDGE HAROLD STEVENS
Lewis Rosenberg ’63 wrote a lengthy letter applauding Judge Harold Stevens’s many career firsts, including as BC Law’s first Black graduate (1936). Rosenberg recalled several of his early encounters with Stevens, one of which was in 1962 as a 2L arguing a Moot Court case before him at BC Law. At the reception afterward, Stevens invited Rosenberg to “stop by and say hello” if he ever found himself visiting his courthouse, the New York State Supreme Court. A few years later, Stevens did, indeed, find himself there. He was waiting in a long line for an interview concerning his admission to the New York Bar and asked a court officer where he might find Stevens’s office, thinking correctly that he had the time to stop in and say hello. Again, Stevens welcomed Rosenberg kindly. Some years later, a third face-to-face occurred when Stevens was the presiding judge on a five-member panel before which Rosenberg was arguing an appeal (which he won). Those meetings and others that followed made a lifelong impression on Rosenberg, who wrote in his letter to BC Law Magazine that Stevens’s “warmth and expression of interest in others was legendary.”
We’d like to hear from you. Send your letters to BC Law Magazine, 885 Centre St., Newton, MA 02459-1163, or email to vicki.sanders@bc.edu. Please include your address, email, and phone number.