Rising to the Bar: Minnesota’s Next Generation of Black Lawyers Won’t Back Down

At a time when the rights of marginalized communities are under sustained attack, from voting rights rollbacks to DEI restrictions to immigration enforcement, a new class of Black lawyers is entering the legal profession with something to say and someone to fight for.

Seven graduates from the University of Minnesota, Mitchell Hamline School of Law, and the University of St. Thomas School of Law recently crossed the stage into a profession that has historically excluded people who look like them. The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder sat down with each of them to ask a simple question: what brought you here, and what are you bringing with you? Their answers tell the story of a community that refuses to be left without representation.

For many of these graduates, the road to law school began not in a classroom but in a living room, a courtroom gallery, or behind prison walls. Ebra Brock of Mitchell Hamline carries perhaps the most striking origin story. At eight years old, she met her father for the first time through the walls of Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary. That visit planted a seed. Last year, before her first day of law school, Brock advocated for her father’s release after 22 years of incarceration. She will continue as a summer law clerk at the First Judicial District Public Defender’s Office.

“I knew he needed a lawyer to help get him out,” Brock said. “People like us are meant to be in this space and to own this space, regardless of our financial situations, regardless of where we come from.”

Gloria McKinney of Mitchell Hamline found her calling through watching family members navigate a justice system that felt designed to work against them. “Growing up, I saw just a lot of the harrowing experiences that can happen with the justice system through family… my father and my brother,” she said. “That really inspired me to advocate for people who don’t have a voice and don’t know how to navigate what is unfortunately a tricky system.” McKinney is heading to Dallas to join a firm focused on supporting nonprofit organizations.

For Jadyn Lovelady of the University of Minnesota, who aims to join the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office as an assistant attorney general in the public safety division, the motivation was both personal and communal. “Seeing the way the world works, how it impacts people in the majority, but especially minority populations. How it impacted myself and my family, people that I care about… and knowing that there was a way that I could help,” she said. “There’s something in me that always wants to help people.”

Several graduates pointed to trailblazers who showed them the door was open, even when it was barely cracked. Desmond Bassett, who looks ahead to joining the Maslon LLP as a litigation associate, cited the late Justice Alan Page, NFL Hall of Famer and former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice, as the man who made him believe a path existed. “To see another African American man who played football and became a leader in the legal field really inspired me,” Bassett said. “When it comes to the difficulties people face navigating the legal system, I’m able to meet them where they are, but also be their champion.”

Kyle Fluker of the University of Minnesota traces his inspiration to a biography his mother brought home when he was a child: the life of Thurgood Marshall. “I just really found myself attracted to his story and everything that he was doing back in the civil rights era,” Fluker said. Now looking forward to Fredrikson & Byron’s Tax & Business Planning practice group, Fluker has his eyes on the Cruz Guzman school integration case as an area where he hopes to contribute. “I really want to work towards integrating schools,” he said. “Even if it means going into schools and showing students what we can do, showing them someone that looks like them out there in the field.”

The disparity in legal representation is not abstract. Black lawyers represent a fraction of the legal profession nationally, and in Minnesota the numbers are even starker. These graduates know the gap intimately, and they are stepping into it deliberately. Tyler Okemwa of the University of St. Thomas, heading to JHB Law Office to focus on estate planning and probate law, spoke directly to what her presence will mean. “We don’t see a lot of Black people in the profession of law,” Okemwa said. “I want to bring that personal connection with my clients, to represent people where they are struggling. A lot of our people are not being represented fairly, and the fact that I would be able to advocate for them and bring that cultural connection, I feel like it would make them feel that they’re seen.”

One male graduate, whose name MSR wasn’t able to verify by publication, spoke to the language and access barriers many communities face. “Helping people understand what rights they have, and seeing how individuals are not aware of what services and what rights they can pursue, especially people of color who are disadvantaged or for whom English is their second language, that’s something that drives me.”

What unites these seven graduates is not just where they came from but what they are choosing to carry into rooms that were not built for them. McKinney put it plainly. “Sometimes we can be called, as Black folks in predominantly white spaces, to shrink or silence ourselves or feel like we’re impostors,” she said. “But it’s really time to take a stand and push the envelope forward and not take no for an answer. Disorganized truth will never beat an organized lie. It’s time to unify, organize, and make the right things happen.”

Lovelady spoke about the empathy required to do this work well. “I understand that there’s a person there, there’s a heart, there’s a human, and there’s a way to impact them in the community that’s beneficial to everybody involved.”

And Brock, whose life has been shaped by what happens when communities go unrepresented, offered a message to anyone watching from the outside who wonders whether this profession has room for them. “I hope to be a presence for people in my community who don’t see themselves here,” she said. “They are welcome. And they are needed.”

The bar has been passed. These seven are ready.

For more information on the Minnesota Association for Black Lawyers, visit www.mabl.org.

Jasmine McBride welcomes reader responses at jmcbride@spokesman-recorder.com.