A Yale legal scholar who graduated at the top of her high school class is finally honored as valedictorian 38 years after she was denied the title. In 1984, Tracey Meares had the highest academic ranking at her Illinois high school. She would have been the state’s first black valedictorian, but just before graduation, the school decided to end the practice of naming a valedictorian, instead opting to recognize “top students,” a title Meares would share with a white classmate.
The events that led to Meares’ valedictorian snub were suspicious. There was evidence that the move was racially motivated (the school reinstated the valedictorian title eight years later). But fearing that the school might retaliate against Meares’ younger siblings, she and her family quietly moved on. Then last year, Maria Ansley, a photographer at Southern Illinois School of Medicine, was on a weekend trip with Meares’ younger sister, Dr. Nicole Florence, and heard the story of Meares’ valedictorian snub and felt it was a story that needed to be told.
So Ansley created a documentary film, “No Title For Tracey,” to get the truth out. And at a screening of the documentary this past weekend, the current district superintendent at Meares’ former school, who was a freshmen at the same school when Meares was a senior, declared Meares as Illinois’ first black valedictorian. She was presented with a certificate and the valedictorian medal she should have received 38 years ago.
Source: The Guardian