First UM Building Named After Black Alumni

Miami FL

09 March, 2022

2:04 PM

Description

A Miami Times Staff Report, the Miami Times Mar 8, 2022 Harold Long Jr. and H.T. Smith never needed a contract sealed with signatures. All it took was a handshake for the two Black lawyers to form what became the first Black law firm in downtown Miami. On Friday, on the University of Miami Coral Gables campus – where both men earned their law degrees – the two longtime friends were reunited in name when the institution dedicated the student services building in their honor. "My name going up on that building is an incredible honor," Smith said. "And having it appear with my only law partner, Harold Long, is like hitting the lottery – a million to one." The Harold Long Jr. and H.T. Smith Student Services Building marks a milestone for the university, becoming the first structure in the school's history to be named after accomplished Black alumni. "Universities have a crucial role to play in modeling racial justice," said Julio Frenk, UM president. "We remain committed to creating a more just society, and the naming of the student services building is another example of our efforts." As an undergraduate at the University during the 1960s, Long blazed new trails. He started the United Black Students organization and led a sit-in inside Henry King Stanford's office – then the university's president – demanding that the institution enroll more Black students, increase the number of scholarships for underrepresented students, create a curriculum focusing on African American history and hire Black professors to teach those courses. Long graduated from the School of Law in 1971, becoming one of the first Black students to do so, then went on to a distinguished career, which included serving as justice of the peace for the Opa-locka and defending the underserved as a private attorney. He died last year at age 73. "He would have been in tears if he were here today to witness this moment," Long's widow, Leslie Long, said prior to Friday's dedication. "He loved the U, and the older he became, he fell in love with it even more. He sacrificed and always fought for what he believed in, even if it would have cost him his life." Smith, a longtime University trustee, described his former law partner as "tremendously humble." The two practiced law together for a decade. As a student, Smith knew about Long leading the sit-in in Stanford's office, but it wasn't until he saw an old newspaper photo of Long in jail that he learned his colleague, like the civil rights demonstrators of the '60s, was so passionate about his cause that he was willing to be arrested for it. "I said, 'Harold, you never told me that you got arrested for protesting.' Harold looked at me and said, 'It never came up.' That's how humble he was," Smith noted. Starting in the mid-1970s, Long and Smith P.A. rented office space out of One Biscayne Tower in downtown Miami, sometimes representing clients who, unable to afford an attorney, would pay for legal fees by rendering a service of their own. One woman, for example, was an accomplished cook who paid with a Bahamian meal of peas and rice and conch fritters, Smith recalled. His and Long's partnership was built on trust. "We went into practice together on a handshake," Smith said. "We were so locked into each other's philosophy of the practice of law and community service and our connection to the University that we trusted each other enough to not need a contract." Before the two forged a partnership, Smith became a trailblazer in his own right, serving as Miami-Dade County's first Black assistant public defender and then as the county's first Black assistant county attorney. Smith served more than a year in Vietnam, coming home to Miami in 1970 with a dream of enrolling in the University of Miami's law school and becoming a lawyer who would defend the rights of the weak and the marginalized. But he faced two obstacles: classes would be starting in just two weeks and he hadn't even taken the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). Determined to start classes that semester, Smith drove to the Coral Gables campus and, without an appointment, met with the law school's dean, telling him that the LSAT was not administered to soldiers who were fighting and dying in Southeast Asia. "I'm going to be in law school this semester – in the first class, in the first row, in the first seat. That is what I gotta do," Smith told the dean. Impressed, the dean worked out an arrangement. He would admit Smith under one condition – that he pass the LSAT the next time the test was given. And Smith did. Now, Smith's name appears on the façade of a three-story, 30,000-square-foot university building built to provide students with services that include housing registration, financial aid and academic counseling under one roof. The Miami Times is the largest Black-owned newspaper in the south serving Miami's Black community since 1923. The award-winning weekly is frequently recognized as the best Black newspaper in the country by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.