A few weeks after I started curating Black Wide-Awake in October 2015, I discovered the obituary of Herbert O. Reid, a native of Wilson, “a leading civil rights lawyer who participated in several landmark cases that helped dismantle racial segregation in public facilities,” long-time advisor to Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry — and graduate of Harvard Law School in the class of 1945.

And there I was thinking I was first.

It wasn’t a hubristic assumption. I had never heard of another, and surely I would have, right? 

I’m in Cambridge this weekend, basking in the marvelous sunshine that is the Celebration of Black Alumni. It’s only the fifth such event; the first was in 2000, and I hadn’t been to any before now. Yesterday’s morning plenary session featured the dean of Howard University Law School, Roger Fairfax, who paid homage to the seven Harvard Law-educated deans who had preceded him. Herbert O. Reid, of course, was among them. 

Twice this weekend, speakers have invoked a version of Deuteronomy 6:10-12 — “We all drink from wells we did not dig, and sit in the shade of trees we did not plant.” Somewhere in the 41 years between his departure and my arrival on Massachusetts Avenue, Herbert Reid‘s memory was lost in his own hometown. I drank from his well, sat in his shade, and did not know him.

The Celebration of Black Alumni reconnected me with friends and classmates I haven’t seen in decades. It affirmed me in ways I had not thought I needed affirming, not least in my purpose to reclaim our heroes and their stories. We remember Herbert Ordre Reid, now and always.