Terrence Franklin Presents “Bending the Arc of History Towards Justice” to the Harvard – Radcliffe Circle ’90 Alumni Group

Partner Terrence Franklin presented “Bending the Arc of History Towards Justice” to the Harvard – Radcliffe Circle ’90 Alumni Group on June 24, 2021. Franklin discovered a will contest from the 1840s that challenged the will done by his fourth great-grandfather that emancipated Franklin’s fourth great-grandmother and her children and grandchildren. In this program, Franklin recounts the enthralling story of his ancestor Lucy Sutton and her fight in the courts to uphold the last will and testament, and he also profiles several other black women, contemporaries of Lucy, who just may have helped Lucy and her family make it to freedom.

Radcliffe College was a women’s liberal arts college and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College from 1879 through the mid-1990s. The Radcliffe Circle ’90 Alumni Group has recently been exploring history, literature, film, and passion projects, with a focus on Black women and women of color, and meeting on Zoom every week. Franklin is an ’89 alumnus of Harvard Law School.