Single mother graduates from UCLA with three degrees

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

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Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

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June 17, 2014

by Carrie Healey, theGrio

deanna-jordan-2 — Deanna Jordan, 28, looks up before she walks in the graduation ceremony at UCLA.

A single mother of three boys, Deanna Jordan, graduated over the weekend from UCLA with three degrees.

Jordan grew up in Compton and, by 22, was a mother of three.

“I needed for my sons to see there was a legacy that preceded them with college,” Jordan told CBS Los Angeles. “I am the first in my family to go to college.”

The 28-year-old attended West Los Angeles Community College for two years before transferring to UCLA, where she spent three-and-a-half years.

Jordan earned two bachelor’s degrees and a master’s degree in African-American Studies.

“You can’t really succeed unless you fail, and I failed a lot of times, but it was my persistence and my willingness never to give up,” she said.

In addition to her studies, she founded the Compton Pipeline Taskforce, a volunteer organization that helps Compton schools.

The new graduate plans to attend law school in the future in an effort to become a district attorney.

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