The Jane C.M. Lucas ‘44 Committee for Jurisprudence and Activism is a body at the University of Michigan Law School focused on celebrating the unique contribution of the African-American community to American imaginings of jurisprudence. 

Started in 2016, by a broad coalition of student groups, the Committee is formed of students, faculty, and alumni that come together to organizing two major events each academic year: 

1. Jane C. M. Lucas, '44 Lecture

Every year, we invite and honor an African-American woman luminary from the judiciary to deliver a lecture on the importance of diversity.

2. The Jane C.M. Lucas ‘44 Social Action Workshop

Jane Cleo Marshall Lucas, the first female African-American graduate of the Law School, was born in Benton Harbor, Michigan in 1920.  She received a scholarship to Howard University and was part of the class entering in 1937.  She graduated from Howard University in 1941.  She received her M.A. in political science from the University of Michigan Rackham School of Graduates Studies in 1942 and in the fall of 1942 began at the University of Michigan Law School.

She graduated from the Law School in 1944 and passed the Michigan bar examination.  After graduation, her first job was in the law office of Arthur Davis Shores, the only black lawyer in Alabama.  Because of the hurdles placed in her way, she was not able to sit for the Alabama bar examination before she married and moved to Fairmont Height, Maryland.

In 1946, she became the first African-American woman to pass the Maryland bar and was invited to join the Howard University law faculty becoming the first woman to teach full-time on the law faculty.  She resigned from the faculty in 1950 and moved with her husband to Staten Island, New York.