Charles Ogletree, Longtime Authorized and Civil Rights Scholar at Harvard Regulation Faculty, Dies at 70

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a regulation professor and civil rights scholar with a distinguished profession at Harvard Regulation Faculty and whose checklist of shoppers ranged from Anita Hill to Tupac Shakur, died Friday after a prolonged battle with Alzheimer’s illness. He was 70.

A California native who typically spoke of his humble roots, Ogletree labored within the farm fields of the Central Valley earlier than establishing himself as a authorized scholar at one of many nation’s most outstanding regulation colleges the place he taught Barack and Michelle Obama.

Harvard Regulation Faculty Dean John F. Manning shared information of Ogletree’s loss of life in a message to the campus neighborhood Friday.

“Charles was a tireless advocate for civil rights, equality, human dignity, and social justice,” Manning mentioned within the message that the regulation faculty emailed to The Related Press. “He modified the world in so some ways, and he might be sorely missed in a world that very a lot wants him.”

Ogletree represented Hill when she accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment throughout the future U.S. Supreme Court docket justice’s Senate affirmation hearings in 1991.

He defended the late rapper Tupac Shakur in legal and civil circumstances. He additionally fought unsuccessfully for reparations for members of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Black neighborhood who survived a 1921 white supremacist bloodbath.

Ogletree was surrounded by his household when he died peacefully at his residence in Odenton, Maryland, his household mentioned in a press release.

Ogletree went public with the information that he’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2016. He retired from Harvard Regulation Faculty in 2020. The Merced County courthouse in California’s agricultural heartland was named after him in February in recognition of his contributions to regulation, schooling and civil rights.

Ogletree didn’t attend the ceremony unveiling his identify on the courthouse His brother informed the gang that gathered within the city within the San Joaquin Valley that his brother was his hero and that he would have anticipated him to say what he’d mentioned many instances earlier than: “I stand on the shoulders of others.”

“He all the time desires to offer credit score to others and never settle for credit score himself, which he so richly deserves,” Richard Ogletree informed the gathering.

Charles J. Ogletree Jr. grew up in poverty on the south facet of the railroad tracks in Merced in an space of Black and brown households. His mother and father have been seasonal farm laborers, and he picked peaches, almonds and cotton in the summertime. He went to varsity at Stanford College earlier than Harvard.

Manning mentioned in his message Friday that Ogletree had a “monumental impression” on Harvard Regulation Faculty.

“His extraordinary contributions stretch from his work as a practising lawyer advancing civil rights, legal protection, and equal justice to the change he dropped at Harvard Regulation Faculty as an impactful establishment builder to his beneficiant work as instructor and mentor who confirmed our college students how regulation will be an instrument for change,” he mentioned.

Ogletree is survived by his spouse, Pamela Barnes, to whom he was married for 47 years; his two youngsters, Charles J. Ogletree, III and Rashida Ogletree-George; and 4 grandchildren.

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