Few stood quite as tall as Charles ‘Tree’ Ogletree Jr.
OPINION: Ogletree, the Harvard Law legend who died last Friday, was a giant in the legal world, who championed social justice and helped mold generations of legal scholars from the Obamas to the writer of this tribute.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
There is an age-old question, one skirting both science and perception, that asks whether a tree falling in a forest makes a sound if there is no one around to hear it.
Though countless individuals through the ages have unsuccessfully grappled with this scenario, for me, the answer to this question has recently become very clear. If that tree was a world-renowned civil rights attorney and famed Harvard Law professor named Charles, then the answer is a resounding and definitive yes.
Charles J. Ogletree Jr. — appropriately and affectionately nicknamed “Tree” — left us on Aug. 4 while at his home in Odenton, Maryland, after struggling for years with Alzheimer’s. I knew him both professionally and personally. He was both my teacher and my friend.
The professional part is already the stuff of legend. A Harvard Law professor, famed civil rights attorney, scholar and media personality, the Merced, California, native received his B.A. and M.A. in political science from Stanford University before earning his J.D. from Harvard Law. In 1984, Tree joined Harvard Law School as a lecturer after spending the better part of a decade representing clients at the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C.
His impact at Harvard Law was massive: founding the university’s Criminal Justice Institute in 1990, which trains and enables student lawyers to represent indigent defendants in the Boston area; becoming the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law in 1998; establishing the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law in 2005, a nationally renowned center focused on issues of social justice and equal opportunity; and creating the Saturday School program, a platform supporting Black students and their critical study of the law.
Tree’s impact beyond the university was as sizable, representing celebrity clients like Tupac Shakur and Anita Hill, using his national media platform to advance issues of law and social justice, authoring numerous books on race and society, and mentoring countless students, lawyers, political figures, and social justice warriors within and beyond the law school.
The personal part speaks more to his impact on my family, my friends and me. Tree was my professor when I entered law school in the 1990s. I worked with him and Professor Derrick Bell as a spokesperson for the movement to get a tenured Black female professor here at Harvard, which ultimately resulted in the hiring of the late Lani Guinier. Tree, along with Bell and Guinier, poured their knowledge, wisdom and insight into me, and I drank up everything they offered.
I was the youngest member of the four-person team on the first Harvard Law School trial team that Tree created. We won. I took the Winter Trial Advocacy Workshop (TAW), an intensive course in trial analysis, skills, and techniques and practically lived in the Criminal Justice Institute, two of his signature initiatives.
Tree taught me about law, legal ethics, social justice and fairness. He joked that I would never be rich because my heart, passion and compassion were too deep to ever stop serving the people.
Along with my then-boyfriend and now-husband, Harvard Law professor Ron Sullivan, we babysat Tree’s children while in law school. He ultimately became the godfather of ours.
Tree continued to guide me, even insisting that I work abroad in Kenya for a year after graduating from law school. He told me that Ron would come with me or I could leave him behind.
Later, as I established myself in my own career, Tree became my colleague and associate in many ways. Still, throughout our professional relationship and our friendship, he was always the teacher, and I, the student.
He and his amazing wife, Pam, taught me how to live in an active and fierce way while modeling how Ron and I could be true life partners. We watched and learned from them as we vacationed at Martha’s Vineyard, chatted in their home or watched their children.
Tree was the biggest advocate for Ron and I becoming the first Black masters/faculty deans in the school’s history at Harvard University. Tree always called us his students regardless of what we went on to accomplish in life, be it Ron and I, or the ultimate power couple, former president and first lady Barack and Michelle Obama. He often joked that Michelle and Barack were his students, like Ron and me, but that he liked me and Michelle a whole lot better, that we were the true stars.
From the moment I entered law school back in the early ’90s, like a firmly rooted tree, Tree was always there.
Later, particularly for those who knew him well, it was difficult when he started acting erratically, prior to his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Ultimately, this terrible disease stole everything and, once he retired and left Massachusetts, we were no longer able to keep in touch as he sometimes remembered us, but then did not.
But we, undoubtedly, will always remember Tree.
For there is truly no earthly forest big enough to quiet such an impact.
Stephanie Robinson, Esq. is a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School where she teaches on issues of democracy, media, and race, and their intersections with the law. She is the president of Sly Bear Media Group. She is the former chief counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and was the political and social commentator for “The Tom Joyner Morning Show,” offering her perspective weekly to over 10 million people on the day’s most pressing issues.
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