On August 2-4. 1996. Louis Westerfield -- law school dean at three schools, law professor at four schools, author, judge, community leader, and dedicated family man -- died of a heart attack in New Orleans.

At the time of his death, he was Dean and Director of the Law Center of the University of Mississippi -- the first African American to hold that position. Born in DeKalb, Mississippi, in 1949, his early years were spent in the sharecropper home of his grandparents in rural Mississippi and with his mother in public housing in New Orleans.

His experiences with poverty and racism were critical elements in forming his life-long advocacy of expanded opportunity for those traditionally overlooked by society. He almost didn't go to college. When he was getting ready to graduate from high school, he went to see the school counselor about taking the test for entering college. But the counselor told him, "Westerfield, there is no need for you to take the ACT. You're certainly not college material."

As Westerfield often said about the incident: "Obviously, I didn't take his advice. But just as obviously, many Others did." He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Southern University in New Orleans in 1971 mid a Juris Doctor from Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans in 1971.

After a year an assistant district attorney in New Orleans, Westerfield began his career in legal education as an assistant professor and director of the law clinic at Southern University School of Law in Baton Rouge, He then returned to Loyola University School of Law, where he taught subjects ranging from criminal law to constitutional law and became the school's first tenured African-American professor of law.

In 1979, Westerfield moved his growing family to New York so that he could pursue advanced legal studies Lit Columbia University School of Law, where he received a Master of Laws degree in constitutional and criminal law.