Harvard Law School scholar Charles Ogletree passes away at 70

Harvard Law School professor and civil rights scholar Charles Ogletree, whose list of clients ranged from Anita Hill to Tupac Shakur, passed away on Friday at the age of 70 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

California native legal scholar, Ogletree worked in Central Valley farm fields before establishing himself at Harvard Law School. He was also one of the teachers of Barack and Michelle Obama. 

Harvard Law School Dean John F Manning announced Ogletree's death in a message to the campus community on Friday.

"Charles was a tireless advocate for civil rights, equality, human dignity, and social justice," Manning said. "He changed the world in so many ways, and he will be sorely missed in a world that very much needs him."

"His extraordinary contributions stretch from his work as a practising attorney advancing civil rights, criminal defence, and equal justice to the change he brought to Harvard Law School as an impactful institution builder to his generous work as a teacher and mentor who showed our students how law can be an instrument for change," he added.

Ogletree represented Anita Hill, a US lawyer and author when she accused future US Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment in 1991 during the future justice's Senate confirmation hearings.

He represented the late rapper Tupac Shakur in legal matters, both civil and criminal. Additionally, he unsuccessfully battled for compensation for Black residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma who had survived a 1921 white supremacist slaughter.

According to a statement by his family, Ogletree was surrounded by his family when he died peacefully at his home in Odenton, Maryland.

Ogletree, who announced his Alzheimer's diagnosis in 2016, retired from Harvard Law School in 2020.

In honour of Charles Ogletree's achievements in law, education, and civil rights, the Merced County courthouse in the agricultural heartland of California was named in February, but he was unable to attend the ceremony, CBS reported.

The crowd gathered in the town of San Joaquin Valley was addressed by his brother, Richard Ogletree, who said that his brother was his idol and that he would have anticipated him to say what he had frequently said: "I stand on the shoulders of others."

"He always wants to give credit to others and not accept credit himself, which he so richly deserves," Richard Ogletree told the gathering.

On the south side of the railway tracks in Merced, where there were many Black and brown families, Charles Ogletree grew up in abject poverty. He picked cotton, peaches, and almonds in the summer while his parents worked as seasonal farm labourers. 

Prior to Harvard, he attended Stanford University for college and leaves behind his wife of 47 years, Pamela Barnes, his two children, Charles J Ogletree III and Rashida Ogletree-George, as well as four grandchildren.