A single mother from New York named Afrika Owes recently captured the attention of the internet by posting her response to the news that she had passed the bar test on her very first try.
On Thursday, April 25, the mother, who is thirty years old and had previously served time in prison, uploaded a video on TikTok with which she documented her reaction to seeing the results of her bar test. The third-year student at the Fordham University School of Law yelled out, “I passed! I passed!” as she saw her result appear on the screen.
Following that, she broke down in tears when she read the news. While holding up separate images of her mother, grandmother, and son, Kairos, Owes expressed her gratitude to all three of them. Once she had finished leaping about in delight, she thanked them all.
In the comment, she also expressed her gratitude to her family, saying, “Thank you to my angels, my momma, and my grandma.” Thank you for every member of my family, including my kid, my brother, and my tribe.
She included the following in the text that was included inside the video: “Point of View: You are a formerly incarcerated single mother who passed the bar early on the very first try.”
The video was also uploaded to her personal Instagram account, which she shared also. In a heartfelt remark that she used to celebrate her most recent achievement, she said that she has entered the ranks of the “2% Black women attorneys in the United States and the less than 1% of formerly incarcerated black attorneys in the United States.”
Owes goes into more detail with PEOPLE about her path from Rikers Island to becoming a graduate of Fordham Law School. This comes after her video went viral and had 2.9 million views.
According to her statement to PEOPLE, she has “always wanted to be a lawyer,” and she explains that she was raised in a “low-income,” “single-parent household” with her mother, who eventually passed away.
“Despite our circumstances, she always was an advocate for herself, [and] other people in the community and that was always a skill and a value that was embedded in me,” Owes adds in his testimony. “So I knew I always wanted to go to law school for that reason.”
In an interview with PEOPLE, Owes claims that she was arrested when she was 17 years old, but she also mentions that her time spent in jail provides her with a “perspective” that allows her to “bring the real world really in conjunction with the law.”
“I encourage people like me to get into a law or any space because personal experience is such a valuable asset,” according to Owes.
According to The New York Times, Owes was accused in 2011 as a participant in a conspiracy case that included gang-related allegations. In a guilty plea, she admitted to both the felony charges of conspiracy and possession of firearms. After that, she was sentenced to spend six months on Rikers Island as part of the New York Youthful Offender program. She was also required to serve five years of probation upon her release, although she “only wound up doing two years.”
She studied for both the SAT and the GED so that she could complete her sentence. When she was finally freed from prison, she had already finished her high school education and was on her way to college, where she finished her first two years of college while simultaneously completing her probation. According to her blog, Owes received a degree in Sociology from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where she also received minors in Africana Studies and Public Policy. She graduated with a total of cum laude.
“It was never a doubt in my mind that I was going to figure out how I was going to get right back on track,” according to her interview with PEOPLE.
Owes reveals to PEOPLE that her family and the neighborhood she grew up in in Harlem, New York, had a significant role in her decision to pursue a legal education. Her community “monitored” her soon after she was released from prison in an attempt “to make sure that she went right back on [her] path.”
“There were so many people that believed in me and I said, ‘You know what, I would hate for this to be in vain.'”
She expresses her gratitude to her community while also expressing her wish that her “story inspires people to not think of themselves as outcasts in this space, but as superheroes.” She says this while staying appreciative to her community.
She goes on to say, “There are some people who are one of a kind, and they say things like, ‘Oh, I have something that other people don’t have.'” In addition, they should not see you as a burden but rather as an additional leverage point that will allow them to become an asset in this field.
This coming May, Owes will get his law degree from the Fordham University School of Law. She is going to be employed in the field of tax law at a large legal firm, and she is hoping to get a judicial clerkship at some point in the future.
However, the National Conference of Bar Examiners reports that the total success percentage for the examination that took place in New York in February was just 42% for 3,962 examinees, and the pass rate for first-time test takers was 59%. In addition, the American Bar Association reports that the percentage of first-time Black test takers who passed the exam was around 57% in the year 2022, but the average percentage of students who passed the test who were White was 83%.
@afrika.owes Thank you to my angels, my momma, my grandma. Thank you for my son, my brother, my family and my tribe. I’m beyond happy to join the ranks of the 2% of Black women Attorneys in the U.S. #singlemom #attorney #blackattorney #lawyer ♬ golden hour – piano version – main character melodies