ABSTRACT
In 1981, two years before A Nation at Risk was released, I graduated from the Howard University School of Law in Washington, DC, the same law school that produced Thurgood Marshall. As the graduating class president, I gave the commencement address. I was super proud to be a Howard alum. Law school had been a natural extension of my learning and growth process. Like my dad always told us, “grade school, high school, college and beyond.” Getting my law degree didn’t make me feel extraordinarily special. I was doing what I was supposed to do. Unlike many, I was blessed to have received a great educational experience. And I still wanted to change the world; I just wasn’t exactly sure how. For many years growing up in Indianapolis in the midst of the social changes I mentioned above, I had dreams of being a civil rights lawyer in the tradition of Thurgood Marshall. Indeed, that was what, in part, drove me to enroll at Howard University. While in law school, I still enjoyed the thought of being a litigator, but my interest drifted away from civil rights law. I had really good courtroom skills and decided to hone that craft. For most of the 1980s I was having great success trying cases in the DC courts, both local and federal. Before long, I was itching to get involved in the community and decided that the best way to make a difference was to run for public office. By 1992, I was firmly entrenched in the local DC community and I formally entered the DC political arena.
