Courthouse named for Harvard law professor who taught Obamas

MERCED, Calif. (AP) — A courthouse in California’s agricultural heartland has been named after a Native American son who rose from toiling in the fields to a successful career at Harvard Law School, where he taught Barack and Michelle Obama.

Family members and supporters attended a ceremony Friday naming the Merced County Courthouse to honor Charles James Ogletree Jr.’s contributions to law, education and civil rights, the fresno bee reported.

Ogletree, 70, represented Anita Hill when she accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during her US Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991, and he defended the late rapper Tupac Shakur in criminal and civil. He also fought unsuccessfully for reparations for members of the black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma who survived a 1921 racial massacre by whites.

The lawyer, who retired from Harvard in 2020 after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, was not present. But a brother and sister were among dozens of people, including judges and notable members of the community.

Ogletree spoke of his humble roots, where he grew up in poverty on the south side of the Merced railroad tracks in an area of ​​black and brown families. His parents were seasonal farm workers and he picked peaches, almonds and cotton in the summer. He went to college at Stanford University and then Harvard Law School.

Richard Ogletree said that if his brother had been present at the ceremony, he would expect him to say what he had heard him say in previous speeches and presentations: “I stand on the shoulders of the others”.

“He always wants to give credit to others and not accept credit himself, which he so deserves,” said Ogletree, who called his brother his hero.