Three years after earning his J.D. at Northeastern University School of Law, B.Michael took a course to review for the bar exam.
1987-pieper-bar-reviewHe filled in 14 spiral-bound notebooks, brimming with mnemonic-acronyms. The first page of each is pictured below to provide a sense of what he was studying.
B.Michael had previously registered for a similar course to prepare him to sit for the July 1984 exam in New York, just after graduation, but decided against it.
Graduating from law school at Northeastern University was a tremendous achievement for B.Michael.
1984E27-law-school-graduation-invitation-ticket-1Several members of his extended family were present to witness the occasion of the first, but not the last, of his cousins’ generation to earn a graduate degree.
Below left: B.Michael flanked by his parents, Bert and Sheila. Below right (from left to right): his grandmother, “Mother”, B.Michael, mother Sheila, cousin Christopher, father Bert, sister-in-law Lisa, older brother Stephen. Not pictured: cousin Sheilah.
While at Northeastern, he was involved with, and helped organize, the Black Law Students Association (BLSA).
One cultural artifact from that time period, the plaque below, remained in his files for safekeeping. It did, however, find its way to Peter Alexander — one of that year’s formidable advocates, who remembers Bert from Moot Court — in 2020.
Here are some of B.Michael’s “deliverables” as a law student, in chronological order. N.B. Except for the first paper, on which he states his name, the others are submitted under his assigned number, which presumably changed each quarter. He is #258 in the winter of 1982-3; #387 during the summer of 1983, and #331 during the fall of 1983.
1983-plaintiffs-brief
What was it like for B.Michael, a Black Queer man, to attend law school in Boston in the early 1980s?
Here is a taste of at least what he experienced in the classroom with brilliant professors like Northeastern’s Denise Carty-Bennia, who taught Constitutional Law, a staple class for everyone in their “1L”, or first year of law school.
The excerpt, recorded some time during the 1981-82 academic year, captures roughly 1.25 hours of lecture (with a gap of five seconds at the 37:40 mark) when someone flipped the cassette tape to the B side. Was it B.Michael himself, or did someone make the recording for B.Michael because he was absent?
And if you were in the classroom that day with Carty-Bennia, please contact us here. Bonus points if you recall the date of the lecture!
This unlabeled tape was found in B.Michael’s archives. Many thanks to Lisa Evans-Chapman, B.Michael’s good friend and fellow 1L, for confirming Carty-Bennia’s voice and the material.
And so it begins:
18981A14-northeastern-acknow-of-rectB.Michael’s classes during his very first quarter.
1981-fall-Q-class-skedFirst page of notes from three of B.Michael’s courses: Corporations (Summer 1983), Immigration Law and Administrative Law (Fall 1983).
1983F05-corporations 1983I14-immigration-law 1983I16-administrative-lawThis additional page from his Corporations class contains a doodle! So very rare in any of B.Michael’s law school notebooks. Curious what he may have been wanting to “remember” in that moment, and to what “a little piece of life” refers. Perhaps a commentary on there being more to life than Ford Motor Company, or Corporations, or law school?
1983F-doodle-corporations
At age 23, B.Michael began his 19th continuous year of formal education, and the first among his extended family to pursue a post-undergraduate degree.
From his official acceptance in March through to the beginning of classes in September, B.Michael was engaged in a robust process of orientation. See packet below with communiques from administrators, professors, fellow students, affinity organizations et al.
1981-NUSoL-orientation-packetOne key component of his onboarding was a “First Year Survival Package” which came from the National Black American Law Students Association, now NBLSA, which was just 13 years old when he began at Northeastern.
1981I02-national-BALSA-first-year-survival-packageHe would come to obtain the historical, though nonetheless relevant, resource below from 1973 (in three parts).
1973I08-annual-orientation-program-for-black-law-students-1-of-3 1973I08-annual-orientation-program-for-black-law-students-2-of-3 1973I08-annual-orientation-program-for-black-law-students-3-of-3Though Bert ended up attending law school at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, he had at least one other option in Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.
1981C04-rutgers-law-school-acceptance