How Kamala Harris 'inspired' a poem comparing her California law school to a slave ship and 'intellectual apartheid'

Vice President Kamala Harris was once the inspiration of a poem describing law school as a slave ship, written and performed in honor of her graduation from the University of California Hastings Law School.

Author and playwright Lisa B. Thompson, then a student at the University of California, wrote and performed a poem about life as a black student for the College of the Law African Peoples Graduation Celebration in 1989. 

Harris was one of the graduates that Thompson celebrated, offering some context into the intellectual environment that the vice president was surrounded by during law school. 

‘I am writing a poem about them three years of law school at Hastings,’ wrote Thompson in her poem, referring to ‘Kamala’ as one of ten black graduates of the program. 

She also dedicated her poem to 'those fifteen disqualified by intellectual apartheid,' black students who apparently failed to graduate.  

Author and playwright Lisa B. Thompson wrote and performed a poem decrying racism in Kamala Harris' law school 

The text of the poem was later published by the law school. 

Thompson wrote about the struggle of her fellow black students, in law school where their C grades could still earn them a ‘JD’ or a Juris Doctor degree to practice law.

‘It should take more than a nation of millions to hold us back from disposing of institutional racism, sexism, classism, fascism and recalling our chant C=JD, C=JD, C=JD,’ she wrote.

She compared law school to a slave ship. 

'Law school is only the middle passage there are those who jumped ship to swim back home or who drowned in the cruel waters of exams, outlines, performance anxiety, and financial sobriety,' she wrote.  

Kamala Harris celebrates with fellow law school graduates from the University of California Hastings Law School

Vice President Kamala Harris appears on stage at the Democratic National Convention

Thompson also chided some professional black lawyers, describing them as ‘Africans who do not know they are African’ by believing the ‘lies’ and act as a ‘super negro, pleased to assist in all forms of litigation.’

The Hastings’ students, Thompson wrote, were ‘no longer facing racist exams’ or ‘confronted by belligerent flyers decaying walls breaking ignorance and hate.’

Thompson’s reference to the ‘belligerent flyers’ likely referred to a scandal the disrupted the school, after a bulletin board decorated by the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) was vandalized with a racist marking.

At the time, Harris was the President of the Black Law Students Association at the University and condemned the action as ‘what we deal with all the time.’

Thompson celebrated Harris’ graduation as a success for black students.

US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at the campaign rally at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris

‘This is a poem for ten beautiful Africans who conquered insane tasks without losing sanity who juggled memory, fear, pain, love, passion, with energy beyond days,’ she wrote.

Thompson urged them not to forget to ‘protect those who adore you from the wicked world.’

Later in life, as Harris ran for president, Thompson posted on social media that she was specifically referring to Harris.

‘I need to share my experience about writing and performing a poem celebrating newly minted JDs Kamala Harris, Dion Raymond, and a handful of others for the Hastings Law School Black Graduation’ she wrote in a post on X.com. 

After graduation, Harris went to work as a prosecutor in Alameda County, California until she met and dated State legislature speaker Willie Brown as he was running for mayor of San Francisco. Harris went on to serve as a lawyer in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office before she quit and campaigned against her former boss Terrence Hallinan.

Thompson, now an established professor at the University of Texas in Austin, went on to have a prolific career in the arts, writing books and plays about the black experience in America. She wrote ‘Beyond The Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class’ and ‘Single Black Female’ a book she turned into a play. She is also a co-host of the podcast Black Austin Matters.

Thompson did not respond to a DailyMail.com request for comment.