Lila Fenwick First Black Female Graduate of Harvard Law (1932- 2020)

On April 4, 2020, the coronavirus (COVID-19) claimed the life of Lila Fenwick, the first black female graduate of Harvard Law School. She was 87.

Fenwick was the daughter of immigrants from Trinidad. Her father was a landlord who owned properties in Harlem and the Bronx. She graduated from Barnard College in New York City in 1953 and earned a juris doctorate at Harvard three years later in 1956. Fenwick then studied at the London School of Economics. After finishing her education, she worked in the Division of Human Rights at the United Nations, where she specialized in gender, racial, and religious discrimination and the protection of indigenous populations.

“I knew I was going to be a lawyer when I was a little girl,”

Lila Fenwick, Interview with Harvard Law Bulletin (2000)

In the 1960s, Ms. Fenwick worked in what was then the Division of Human Rights at the United Nations, said Bertrand Ramcharan, a former acting United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She was a specialist on studies about gender, racial and religious discrimination; the protection of minorities and indigenous populations; and the right to emigrate from oppressive countries.