Charles Ogletree Jr., longtime legal and civil legal rights scholar at Harvard Law Faculty, dies at 70

“Charles was a tireless advocate for civil legal rights, equality, human dignity, and social justice,” Manning said in the concept that the legislation faculty emailed to The Associated Press. “He adjusted the earth in so quite a few methods, and he will be sorely skipped in a earth that really considerably demands him.”

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

He defended the rapper Tupac Shakur in felony and civil conditions. He also fought unsuccessfully for reparations for associates of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Black community who survived a 1921 white supremacist massacre.

Ogletree was surrounded by his loved ones when he died peacefully at his residence in Odenton, Md., his spouse and children mentioned in a assertion.

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

Ogletree did not go to the ceremony unveiling his title on the courthouse. His brother told the crowd that gathered in the city in the San Joaquin Valley that his brother was his hero and that he would have envisioned him to say what he’d explained a lot of periods in advance of: “I stand on the shoulders of other folks.”

“He often wants to give credit history to some others and not accept credit score himself, which he so richly justifies,” Richard Ogletree explained to the collecting.

Charles J. Ogletree Jr. grew up in poverty on the south aspect of the railroad tracks in Merced in an area of Black and brown families. His moms and dads had been seasonal farm laborers, and he picked peaches, almonds and cotton in the summer. He went to college or university at Stanford College just before Harvard.

Manning stated in his message Friday that Ogletree had a “monumental impact” on Harvard Law College.

“His extraordinary contributions stretch from his operate as a practising lawyer advancing civil rights, criminal protection, and equivalent justice to the improve he introduced to Harvard Regulation School as an impactful institution builder to his generous operate as instructor and mentor who showed our college students how legislation can be an instrument for improve,” he said.

Ogletree is survived by his wife, Pamela Barnes, to whom he was married for 47 yrs his two little ones, Charles J. Ogletree III and Rashida Ogletree-George and 4 grandchildren.