40 Under 40 Alumni Awards

SPOTLIGHT ON ALUMNI

Forty Under Forty Alumni Awards

The NCCU Office of Alumni Relations honored forty outstanding alumni at the Forty Under Forty Alumni Awards Gala on Friday, September 24, 2021, at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel and Convention Center in Durham. Of the forty alumni honored, eight were graduates of the university’s school of law. The award was established to recognize NCCU alumni making a significant contribution to arts, entertainment, healthcare, science, education, law, business, entrepreneurship, philanthropy, public service, and government.

NCCU School of Law is proud to recognize these distinguished alumni and commend them for their outstanding legal service to their communities.

JONATHAN BOGUES ’13

ASSOCIATE ATTORNEY

Jordan Price Wall Gray Jones & Carlton, PLLC

KINNA

CLARK ’14

DIRECTOR OF GIFT PLANNING SERVICES

University of North Carolina System

JAMAR

CREECH ’14

MANAGING PARTNER

Diversified Law Group, LLC

MARCEL

MCCREA ’04

MANAGING MEMBER

Phillips and McCrea, PLLC

WILLIAM

MOULTRIE ’14

ASSOCIATE DEAN

University College, North Carolina Central University

DAVID COLE

PHELPS ’13

FOUNDER AND OWNER

The Law Office of D. Cole Phelps, PLLC,

MISSY

WELCH ’05

ACTING ASSISTANT DEPUTY DIRECTOR NC ABC Commission

TIFFANY

WHITFIELD ’11

DISTRICT COURT JUDGE

Fayetteville, NC

SPOTLIGHT ON ALUMNI

Mark Gray II : Family Legacies, Generational Lawyering and Giving Back

By: Deedee Nachman, Professor of Law

“I WAS ONE OF MARK’S 1L PROFESSORS AND RECENTLY SPENT TIME WITH HIM TO TALK ABOUT HIS LAW SCHOOL EXPERIENCE, HIS FAMILY LEGACY AND HIS CAREER TO-DATE. “

Growing up, Mark Gray II heard a lot of “lawyer talk” in his family. Having two parents who are lawyers (Mark Gray and Angela Newell Gray ’94) certainly influenced his decision to pursue a legal education, but for Mark, that was only a small part of a family legacy of lawyering. Mark grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina and graduated from Grimsley High School. From there, he headed to N.C. State University where he majored in Sports Management with minors in Psychology and Spanish. His ultimate goal was to become a licensed sports agent upon graduation and passing the bar. With a mother and grandmother (Dottie Newell ’74) who’d attended NCCU School of Law, as well as an aunt (Regina Newell Stephens ’87), an uncle (Michael Newell ’09), and another aunt who’d been employed by the law school (Pamela Newell), NCCU was high on the list. An academic scholarship tipped the scales and made NCCU School of Law the obvious choice. What was less obvious to Mark, at the time, was the grind required to be successful. “I was under the impression that I’d get by with little effort. My first semester grades quickly dissuaded me from

that impression as I almost flunked out,” Mark remembers. With the help of his professors, who recognized his potential and challenged him to put in the work necessary to be successful, he quickly rebounded. Mark reset his mind and energy and turned things around second semester. After graduation, he applied the same work ethic to preparing for the bar exam. “Seeing my uncle, Michael, graduate and pass the bar on the first try put the pressure on to succeed and I needed that push,” says Mark. While his family’s tradition The scholarship I got from Dean of attending NCCU School of Law (and the academic Douglas impacted my decision scholarship he received to attend NCCU and I want to from Dean Stephen have the same impact on students Douglas) may have encouraged Mark, once that come after me. at NCCU, the professors and culture of support and encouragement were the highlights on his time at the law school. “Seeing the pictures on the wall of the people that came before me made an impression on me. I liked the fact that I was a legacy [at NCCU] and part of a unified community.” Upon graduation, Mark went on to practice in Greensboro at the Gray Legal Group, the law firm his father, now retired, had started in 1991. Mark was interested in many different business endeavors and legal areas, but the opportunity that he couldn’t pass up was taking over the family

firm and practicing law in the community where he grew up. Mark credits his father for being a great legal mentor and the strong reputation of the Gray Legal Group for providing him with a chance to begin his legal career in an existing practice, as opposed to encountering the challenges associated with building a practice from scratch. “I’m fortunate to have inherited 30 years of legal experience and reputation that just made my process a lot smoother,” says Mark.

Since taking over the reins at Gray Legal Group, Mark’s practice has focused primarily on personal injury. In October, 2021, NC Lawyers Weekly reported on a landmark wrongful death case Mark settled on behalf of the estate of a woman leaving behind a young son. Driving on I-40, the young woman’s car broke down. While awaiting roadside assistance inside her car with emergency blinkers on, her car was hit by a tanker truck. Although the details of the settlement are sealed and subject to a non-disclosure agreement, Mark shares that it was “a horrific accident and sad case leaving a young son without a mother.” The suit reached a multi-million-dollar settlement. Mark decided then that big wins and big cases provided a unique opportunity to give back to the community. It also confirmed for Mark that institutions matter.

In his local community, Mark and Gray Legal Group have sponsored canned food drives incorporating the local middle schools and students into a competition with a monetary prize for the school receiving the most donations and a winter clothing drive for under resourced individuals in Greensboro. In December, 2021, Mark established the Gray Legal Group Scholarship at NCCU School of Law. Mark made an initial donation to the scholarship of $20,000 and anticipates similar donations in the future to keep the scholarship active. Unlike an endowed gift, Mark expressed the desire that the entirety of the donation be allocated each year to law students who may have a financial need or who are outstanding scholars.

“The scholarship I received from Dean Douglas impacted my decision to attend NCCU School of Law and I want to have the same impact on

students that come after me,” Mark said.

When he’s not practicing law or working on his real estate development endeavors, Mark loves to travel to places where he can hone his Spanish skills. In addition to the offices located in downtown Greensboro, Gray Legal Group maintains a satellite office in Charlotte, NC and if you drive east on I-85 from Durham to Charlotte you’re likely to see Mark’s face on a billboard or two. Mark has done a lot since graduating almost five years ago and, as he looks to the future, he plans to build on the foundation of Gray Legal Group and take it in new and diverse directions. By embracing his family’s legacy, he is now able to build his own legacy of giving.

And, as for advice he’d offer incoming students?

“Take it seriously from the jump because it goes by quickly.”

SPOTLIGHT ON ALUMNI

Where is the Voice of the Criminal Defense: Take Several Seats at the Table

By Jimonique R.S. Rodgers ‘96 Criminal Defense Attorney

Charles Hamilton Houston once said, “[A] lawyer’s either a social engineer or … a parasite on society. …A social engineer [is] a highly skilled, perceptive, sensitive lawyer who [understands] the Constitution of the United States and how to explore its uses in the solving of problems of local communities and in bettering conditions of the underprivileged citizens.” In this article, I call for criminal defense attorneys to expand their role as social engineers by engaging in greater public discourse and research at the intersection of criminal and civil rights.

Few aspects of the American justice system are better documented than the disparities in the processing of individuals based on their perceived ethnicity. However, the academic and public discussion on racial disparity and crime can be misleading. The data establishes the persistence of racial biases among decision-makers in the justice system as well as racially disproportionate offending patterns. While some see these as mutually exclusive factors, this is a false dichotomy, oversimplifying a complex set of social phenomena.

Both anecdotal and research-based conclusions reflect that our justice systems directly reflect this country’s societal and political policies. This has been evident from the “well-meaning” efforts of the Child-Saving Movement to “protect our society” to the pervasive law enforcement intervention in schools and communities of color “to protect our children,” to the current disenfranchisement of potential voters of color through legislation and overcriminalization “to protect our democracy.”

As NCCU School of Law and other leading institutions are doing, we must create more institutional settings where practitioners, researchers, policymakers, the public, community leaders, and nonprofit organizations come together not merely to present research results or discuss recent tragic events in society—though this is important—but to forge a more deeply nuanced approach to address the root issues that affect public safety for all.

We must develop more and better partnerships to include communities and the organizations that serve them. The ivory towers of academia have researchers who decide who, what, and how to study crime, gathering the data on crime and those deemed to commit it. We routinely have legislators, judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement in the room determining how to address the issue of crime, shaping the narrative of public opinion. Criminal defense attorneys must take an even more significant place as stakeholders in these towers and at these tables.

Attorneys who work in the justice system observe and exercise power (or perhaps not) in the inextricable morass of criminal justice, social disparity, and civil rights in the United States. In his book, Presumed Criminal, Professor Carl Suddler describes how race became a construct for criminality outside the South following World War II and how intergenerational criminality of Black youth became entrenched through justice systems. As seen in our most recent national flashpoints involving police-citizen encounters, we still labor under these burdens even with recent criminal and juvenile justice reforms. While many attorneys working daily and directly with clients focus their attention on the individual clients to whom they owe an ethical duty, there is an opportunity to bring research and data into the courts and our knowledge into the communities. As frontline advocates, we tend to separate data and research on pervasive problems in criminal justice that involve large-scale analysis relying on correlations and studies. However, the factors are inextricably bound up together.

As an attorney practicing for over 20 years and a woman of color for my entire life, I know firsthand

the contours of this problem. I have served as a prosecutor and defense appellate counsel in the Army, assistant general counsel for the national NAACP, and recently as a public defender and statewide deputy director for the Georgia Public Defender Council. To operate within the justice system is to navigate the disproportionate reach of a system of laws, policies, and practices into the lives of children and families of color. I have listened to individuals discuss why they committed crimes ranging from petty theft to murder. I have heard less than a dozen ever tell me that they almost did not commit a crime because of the threat of governmental punishment.

On the other hand, I have heard many describe how familial and social factors contributed to enhanced contact with police and antisocial behavior. A substantive body of research bears out this anecdotal evidence. For example, one study by Del Toro et al. (2019) found that Black and brown boys stopped by police reported greater subsequent involvement in delinquent behaviors. Delinquency did not predict the police stop; the stop predicted delinquency. Once involved, individuals experience the cumulative consequences of their behavior, moving deeper into the criminal justice system, much like a fly trapped within but fighting against a spider web. Most criminal defense attorneys have similar stories, and we must tell those stories more often to inform public opinion, policy, and research. Policymakers, judges, and prosecutors must do more to bring defense attorneys into discussions. This request for more defense attorneys to press their ways farther into public discourse and research does not come with a guarantee that by engaging, we can ensure that our input will be well-received. Tremendous political and ideological pressures shape public policy, and those forces may have little reverence for research-based evidence or individual rights. As criminologist Dr. Alex Piquero observed, “sometimes, no amount of science and messaging, whether by academics, researchers, nonprofits, and even members of the general public, can alter opinions that are solidified beyond what actual numbers say to the contrary” (2019, p. 88). Nevertheless, defense attorneys are accustomed to speaking up for individuals’ rights even when we fear no one may listen. Our obligation is to our clients, and in a very critical way, the U.S. Constitution. Even where political and ideological pressure push practice and policymaking in directions contrary to justice, we must position ourselves to be heard. In the words of our own distinguished School of Law professor and Charles Hamilton Houston chair, Irving Joyner, we must “keep on pushing” to make the time right for a change.

Jimmonique R.S. Rodgers ‘96 (jimmoniquerodgers@ gmail com) is a criminal attorney and former deputy director of the Georgia statewide public defender system. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice & Criminology.

SPOTLIGHT ON ALUMNI

An Update on Incubating Legal Practices: New Name, Same Mission

(Incubator for Legal Practice and Innovation)

By Mark Atkinson ‘20

As profiled in the Spring 2021 Of Counsel Magazine, we launched the Durham Opportunity and Justice Incubator (DOJI) to create opportunities for attorneys who wish to create their own legal practices and to improve access to justice in the community. After one year in operation, the incubator grew from the inaugural two-attorney cohort in Durham to nine attorneys. Those nine attorneys involved in the incubator, as of January 2022, are located across the state and beyond: Durham, Raleigh, Fayetteville, Bunn, Raeford, Charlotte, and Murfreesboro, TN.

When the incubator started in the fall of 2020, the focus was to help attorneys in or near Durham launch their practices, and its name—The Durham Opportunity and Justice Incubator (DOJI)—matched that focus. However, attorneys across the state joined the incubator because the program was primarily online and available for remote access. With the growth and broader geographic

involvement, we updated the incubator’s name to the Incubator for Legal Practice and Innovation (ILPI) in late 2021. ILPI exists to help entrepreneurial attorneys launch innovative and financially sustainable legal practices that improve access to justice. While the name was changed from DOJI to ILPI, the mission has not changed.

As most readers of this magazine know, law school was a time to learn the law, such as the elements of trespassing or depraved heart murder, Supreme Court decisions on freedom of speech, legal writing, stare decisis, appellate briefs, trial advocacy, and piercing the corporate veil. As rewarding and challenging as those years in law school might have been, the courses largely did not prepare attorneys for the entrepreneurial path of starting their own practice. We created ILPI to help those entrepreneurial attorneys start their legal practices and create their own jobs.

WHO IS ILPI FOR?

Participating attorneys tend to be either recent law school graduates (having passed the bar) or experienced attorneys who have worked for a few years. In both cases, they want to start their own legal practice.

WHAT IS THE ILPI PROGRAM AND WHAT ARE ITS BENEFITS?

The program lasts for twelve months and includes training from legal, technical, and business experts. There is also access to free CLEs through privileged membership status at Practicing Law Institute (PLI. edu) and access to free or discounted legal tech tools (e.g., Clio practice management software). The ILPI program also provides a curated notebook of helpful articles, checklists, and references. In addition, access to co-working space and a community of like-minded attorneys who support, inspire and teach each other are all benefits of the ILPI program.

IN WHAT WAYS DOES ILPI PROMOTE LEGAL PRACTICES THAT ARE INNOVATIVE AND FINANCIALLY SUSTAINABLE?

The first step in innovation can be the simple act of questioning how things are done. Is there a better way to do it? The incubator promotes innovative practices such as subscription legal services; unbundled services; flat-fee pricing, technical tools for scheduling automation, client intake, document preparation; digital marketing; and creative use of videos for marketing and client screening. Related to financial sustainability, the first step is often realizing that running a legal practice is running a business. The best attorney in the world will run themselves out of business (or out of their mind) if they do not take care of the business side of their legal practice. Financial sustainability requires attention to business basics: billing, collections, networking, revenue and expenses, profitability, taxes, business continuity, and (yes) retirement planning. We invite a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) to one of our first training sessions. A solo practice may not need a CPA or bookkeeper at the start, but the time will come when one will be necessary.

HOW DOES ILPI IMPROVE ACCESS TO JUSTICE?

The legal market is packed with attorneys targeting the top income brackets. However, there is a lack of attorneys serving modest means clients and clients in rural counties. ILPI equips attorneys working for the underserved middle- and lower-income brackets or in under-served counties by promoting good business practices and innovative uses of technology and delivery of legal services. Attorneys who come through ILPI are exposed to innovative ways to provide affordable legal representation to those who may have considered legal services out of reach.

WHAT IS THE COST OF JOINING ILPI?

As of January 2022, the cost ranges from $25 per month for entirely remote people to $100 per month for those who require co-working office space in Durham.

As ILPI has expanded its geographic reach over the past year, it has also sought to deepen its connection to attorneys before they become attorneys. Having been birthed from the NCCU School of Law, ILPI will always look for ways to support its graduates. Last summer (May-July 2021), when bar prep study space was hard to find, ILPI sponsored study space for seven NCCU School of Law graduates. Study space was made available at Provident1898 in downtown Durham’s historic NC Mutual Life building.

ILPI also intends to support connections with other law schools. The majority of attorneys in the current cohort are from the NCCU School of Law. Still, it also includes attorneys from Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, and City University of New York.

The business opportunity to “do well by doing good” is real. Success is not guaranteed, but it is possible. ILPI exists to support the entrepreneurial dreams of those dedicated to serving others through the law. If interested in learning more about ILPI, how to join, or support it, email the executive director at mark@innovationlegal. org.

Mark Atkinson (‘20) is the Founder and Executive Director of ILPI. He is married to Helen, and they have four adult children and one good dog. You can reach him at mark@innovationlegal.org.

SPOTLIGHT ON ALUMNI

Three Workplace Trends the Legal Community Should Watch in 2022

By Emily M. Dickens ‘02

The events of the last two years presented historic challenges for employers, including the legal community, as organizations were forced to adapt and reinvent themselves amid uncertainty. At SHRM (the Society for Human Resource Management), we’re paying particular attention to three workplace trends that should be on the legal community’s radar.

Remote Work

While scores of jobs must be performed in person, the onset of the pandemic accelerated a shift towards remote work. Many companies are hoping to scale back remote work while trying to recruit in a tight labor market, balance employee preference and maintain office culture.

The full extent of how this will impact employers will become apparent this year. With remote work, applicants are not bound by geographical limitations. A remote worker can field multiple offers from companies across the U.S. and globally, opening the door to unchartered territories for lawyers regarding complex country tax regulations and even visa requirements.

The opportunity for the legal profession is to continue providing legal counsel not just focused on complying with the law but by promulgating innovative solutions to meeting the needs of the business, competing for the best talent, and challenging the status quo.

Unions and Workplace Activism

For in-house counsel and those practicing labor and employment law, 2022 will have a continued focus on unions that grabbed national headlines and gained footholds in companies and industries that

have historically rejected unionizing in 2021. Recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board where Starbucks employees were allowed to vote for unionization in three stores; NCAA college athletes gaining the right to unionize; and Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama voting on unionization due to claims of intimidation are just the beginning.

With President Biden stating that he intends to be “the most pro-union President leading the most pro-union administration in American history,” these are all important developments to keep watching in 2022. Key recurring issues for the legal practitioner’s attention relate to record profits without communicating how those funds are invested back in the business and/or not just distributed via big bonuses and shareholder payouts, expansion of benefits to newer employees, and opportunity for advancement.

Upskilling and Re-skilling

The Great Resignation has employers across the country seeking qualified employees for unfilled positions. Those seeking re-skilling or upskilling grew by nearly 300 million worldwide, according to the International Labor Organization, and nearly 198 million workers were left unemployed. While 52 percent of organizations provide upskilling, including certification programs, apprenticeships and crossfunctional training, the focus is mainly on training new employees.

Organizations, including SHRM, Apple and Google, have sought to democratize reskilling by generating paths for all workers to earn new credentials for relevant skills. The legal profession needs to pay attention to this issue relating to their role as employers and people managers of paralegals, document review specialists, law clerks, and other non-legal practitioners. Additionally, equitable access to training, reimbursement for training, and pursuing federal funding for training will be key issues for your clients. Tuition reimbursement and student loan repayment assistance are adjacent benefits that require oversight to comply with government guidelines and can assist with recruitment.

Rather than being roadblocks, these trends provide a wealth of opportunities for the legal community to work in tandem with human resource professionals while providing innovative, agile and flexible counsel to millions of employers and employees.

Emily M. Dickens is the chief of staff, head of government affairs, and corporate secretary at the Society for Human Resource Management. She is a NCCU School of Law graduate and a NCCU Board of Trustees member.

SPOTLIGHT ON ALUMNI

An Aneurysm Turned an Attorney into a YouTuber

By Marcus Weeks ‘10

In 2021, I decided to change my family’s financial future. But, before I start on what 2021 had in store, I have to discuss 2020 briefly. On June 20, 2020, I walked into the main bedroom just after midnight to tell my wife happy birthday. When I left the room to watch television in the family room, I had a headache out of nowhere, and I never get headaches. Even more bizarre, this headache was centrally located at the base of my head and was a sharp 3 to 5 seconds of pain. The room began to spin, and my heart started racing.

To avoid passing out alone in the room, I touched the wall and used it as a guide to get back into the main bedroom. Once I arrived in the main bedroom, I took a knee, woke my wife, and told her to call 911. I can only imagine what she was thinking. During the middle of a pandemic on her birthday, her husband falls ill.

In about 15 minutes, paramedics had arrived. I was on my feet, not in pain, with no dizziness, not experiencing any abnormal symptoms by that time. However, I decided to go to the Emergency Room because this was such a random event.

After many tests, I sat in my hospital room. Multiple hospital personnel with charts came by to speak with me. The final doctor came to me and said, “You are doing a lot better than this chart says you should be.”

I learned that I would need brain surgery to stop the bleeding from a ruptured aneurysm. A few days later, after waking up from surgery, the doctor entered the room and said, “we addressed the rupture, but we found something else.”

The doctors discovered I had an Arteriovenous Malformation (“AVM”). An AVM is a tangled group of blood vessels and veins that form incorrectly in your brain, causing an increased risk of rupture. An AVM usually happens before birth or shortly afterward. I had three options: 1) do nothing and live with a 5% yearly risk of rupture; 2) radiation treatment that would remove the AVM in 24 months (this still carries a risk of rupture until the AVM no longer poses a risk); 3) brain surgery to remove the AVM immediately.

Before my surgery, I went down a rabbit hole researching brain aneurysms. I selected option number 3, and I realized how blessed and lucky I am because statistics surrounding brain aneurysms are scary for anyone or a family dealing with such an ordeal.

Once the surgery was over, constant thoughts of money, finances, and my family’s financial future were all I could think about. During my time in the Intensive Care Unit, I realized that we did the bare minimum with our finances related to planning for the future. Yeah, we invested in our 401K, but we were not intentional. We were not thinking in a way that could change the life of my kids and future generations.

When I came home, I looked at my wife and said, we have to do something different financially. We had effectively carried the same financial habits from when we were engaged right into our marriage. We realized that how we handled our finances all these years was not in the best interest of our future.

Sometimes we need a kick in the rear to do what we should have been doing all along. Often, that kick in the rear end can push us to do something that we never intended to do as well. In 2021, I created DFD Creative Media. DFD Creative Media is a social media content creation company. Within DFD Creative Media, the company’s first project is a YouTube channel called the DebtFree Dad. Here, I provide financial literacy and education.

As we embarked on my family’s debt freedom journey, I thought that my family’s journey to

financial freedom might help someone else interested in improving their financial situation. The DebtFree Dad YouTube channel was created to promote financial literacy by allowing the community to see firsthand my family’s lessons and moves to obtain financial freedom.

Transparency is a big key to educating the community through YouTube content. We show our real investments, debts, actual returns, and our budget. In our first year of chasing financial freedom, we paid off $169,000 of debt. This included all of the usual suspects such as cars loans, credit cards, 401K loans, and a mortgage on a rental property.

Currently, we are paying off our $239,000 in student loans. In 2021, we paid off $64,000 towards our student loans. Additionally, we were able to grow our net worth by 46%. We not only know when our debt freedom date is; we also know when we should become everyday millionaires (fingers crossed that the stock market produces well). The goal of this article is to encourage you not to do what we did, don’t wait until you get that divine kick in the butt to do what you should have been doing all along. If you want to start a business, build a brand, accomplish health goals, or become a millionaire, it’s all within your reach. I know more than anyone that tomorrow is not promised; thus, we have to take steps to achieve our dreams today and enjoy the times and moments with our loved ones while we can.

Everyone has different goals and dreams, but if 2021 has taught us anything, we must live for today but plan for the future. In this life, complacency does not get rewarded. We must choose not to be comfortable with our situation but take affirmative steps to change our situation. We fail only when we never try to succeed, and the only person who can improve your life is you.

In closing, I wish whoever is reading this much success, peace, and blessings in 2022.

SPOTLIGHT ON ALUMNI

NCCU School of Law Alumni Serving the State at NC Counts Coalition

By Kyle Hamilton Brazile, ‘13 Director of Civic Engagement at NC Counts Coalition

You need not be an attorney to comprehend the devastating impacts the insurrection and a pandemic have had on our nation, or how those occurrences affect our local communities. It is also not difficult to see parallels in societal ills that give rise to Jim Crow, the Wilmington Coup of 1898, and militia organizations involved in the January 6th insurrection have trained for war in rural North Carolina (in Black communities such as Hoffman, NC).

When Stacey Carless, ’13, began building NC Counts Coalition, her initial priority was to ensure a full and accurate census count for North Carolina. But she knew the work would grow to be much larger than Census. “Of course census work is crucial to our democracy, but we needed to create a foundation for future work. To figure out where we needed to go, I listened to the communities we served. I met people who wanted to participate, but who struggled with the (census) survey because of illiteracy, for example. How can we expect people to prioritize being counted in the census, or voting for that matter, if their basic needs aren’t being met?” By the close of the census count, Carless’ vision for the organization came into focus - NC Counts needed to grow so that it could work within communities yearround to address systemic barriers, while building relationships and educating on the importance of a

Stacey Carless ’13 and Kyle Hamilton Brazile ’13

representative and inclusive democracy. “We must connect the work to issues, and ultimately connect how census, redistricting and voting all impact whether community issues are being addressed by elected officials.” That vision moves through the organization’s values as NC Counts now works to build a healthy, just, and equitable North Carolina through cross-sector partnerships that advance systemic solutions for communities facing systemic barriers.

The successes of NC Counts’ efforts are clear in the outcomes - through collaboration between NC Counts, community partners, the US Department of Commerce and the state of North Carolina, the Coalition helped reduce the undercount of historically undercounted communities enough for North Carolina to gain its 14th Congressional seat and an additional vote in the Electoral College.

The census work also laid infrastructure that would later be used during the organization’s vaccine equity and redistricting work. As the Director of Civic Engagement, I’ve worked to facilitate and coordinate redistricting work through efforts that pull together countless allies, community-based organizations, and partner organizations from across the State. Redistricting is the next step in the democratic process after the completion of the decennial census, and it involves the apportionment of political boundaries based upon changes in population witnessed over the last ten years. Drawn maps are fair when they reflect the communities of the State, not merely the political whims of those in office. North Carolina’s Constitution places this redistricting authority squarely with the Legislature with no veto authority from the Governor. And as we have seen countless times in the past - on February 7, 2022 the NC Supreme Court once again struck down maps drawn by the Legislature, calling their gerrymander “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt”. The Courts have been the venue through which North Carolinians can seek protection in instances of racial and political gerrymandered disenfranchisement, and it has been the work of NC Counts over the past year to bring organizations together so that citizens are educated about the process, communities understand the need for responsive maps, and we are all able to connect our community issues to the map drawing process and speak truth to the Legislature.

Health and vaccine equity have also become pillars of the organization. Working with the state of North Carolina, NC Counts formed a private/ public partnership with the goal of increasing the number of people of color and those from historically marginalized populations receiving COVID-19 vaccinations across the State. Shalondra Greenlee, ’14, the Regional Director for Region 4 of Healthier Together, explained the importance of supporting a local approach to recovery and resiliency in our communities. “It allows us to stay flexible, [for example] we know that vaccine access to communities where transportation is typically a barrier has required vaccination events at the transit authorities, in public housing, and community centers. This regional approach helps us stay responsive to issues as they arise so that we can continue to explore opportunities to build capacity for the organizations we serve by collaborating with stakeholders and sharing resources.”

“Our work is important and clearly flows from our sense of obligation to zealously advocate for others,” said Rita Henry, ’07, the Director of Operations. Indeed, advocacy work continues to be key for our democracy. At NC Counts we stand in the gaps, bringing organizations and communities together to work against systemic and racist barriers that continue to hold us back. And we’ve only just begun.

Kyle Hamilton Brazile, ‘13, is the Director of Civic Engagement at NC Counts Coalition, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization headquartered in Raleigh, NC.

MEMORIAL

Mr. Elvis Lewis, Jr. (1944-2021)

Elvis Lewis, Jr., age 77, of Durham, NC, passed away at Duke Regional Hospital Monday morning, August 2, 2021.

Growing up in Vance County, he attended Henderson Institute, where he was an honor student who also excelled in track and baseball. He won the state typing championship as a senior in high school and was awarded a full scholarship to NCCU.

He was a double eagle receiving a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with honors, and a Juris Doctor. He graduated at the top of his law school class. While at NCCU, in the fall of 1964, he was inducted into the Tau Psi chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. He was a proud member of the NCCU Eagles Club and the Society of Golden Eagles.

He began his legal career in 1968 as Assistant Regional Attorney for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in Charlottesville, VA. He was drafted into the United States Army in May of 1969 and was soon commissioned as a Captain in the Judge Advocate General Corps. In this capacity, he served as Defense Counsel and as a Prosecutor. In 1971, he moved with his wife and son to Kaiserslautern, Germany, where he served as one of the first Black judges in an overseas branch of the United States Army. In recognition of his military service, he received a National Defense Service Medal and an Army Commendation Medal.

Following his honorable discharge from the armed services, he established private law practices in Danville, VA and Fayetteville, NC, where he also served as Chairman of the Housing Authority.

He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Claudine Daye Lewis; two sons, Elvis Lewis, III of Durham, NC, and Kevin J. Lewis (Chaundra) of Atlanta, GA; three grandchildren (Kennedy, Lauryn, and Chandler); his sisters Annie Beidleman of Mount Vernon, NY, and Edith Bazemore (Bill) of Fort Washington, MD; and a niece and nephew.