Native Odessan and second-year law student Khamisie Green wants students here to know they are capable of doing anything they want and that teachers are raising global leaders.
Green attends the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University. He is the vice chair of the National Black Law Students Association.
“I’m really excited to serve in the role because of the capacity of work that we have to do. There are students represented from law schools all across the nation that sit on our board and so just the diversity of work and the organization itself makes it very exciting,” Green said.
He has been in the organization for nearly two years.
“I served at the local level as the vice president for one of the largest local chapters in the organization,” at Thurgood Marshall School of Law.
Green said he always wanted to go to law school.
“It’s always been in my purview. Anybody who knows me knows that’s what I should have been doing to begin with. But just the teachers that I had in Odessa, the people that I was mentored by. My grandmother, my godparents, they all kind of put this in me. That’s what I decided to do,” he added.
Getting through law school is one of the hardest things he’s ever done, but he has found it a beneficial and challenging learning experience.
“I wrote a law review article that’s being published by the law school that directly challenges new laws … so just being in law school you get a sense of what the law is, and not only what the law is but how you can contribute to the field academically, so I enjoy legal writing. I also enjoy trial. I’m on the mock trial team,” Green said.
As vice chair of the National Black Law Students Association, he hopes to unify the organization and impact his personal community in Odessa, the state of Texas and the nation at large.
Green said he hopes to impact diversity, equity and inclusion done at the local and national level.
Green hopes to be a judge some day and hasn’t settled on one specific area of law.
He enjoys employment law, personal injury, contract law, criminal and civil law.
Green said he’d like to practice in Texas, particularly the Houston area, but if not, in Washington, D.C. He also wants to clerk for a federal judge.
Even if he is in Houston, Green said he wants to make himself accessible to people in Odessa.
“I want to make myself available to the place that I feel like gave so much to me whether I’m living there physically or not,” he added.
To the teachers in ECISD, Green wanted to give a shoutout to Donna Johnson, who introduced him to performing at Hays Magnet Elementary (now Hays STEAM Academy; Lisa Wills, who was a principal at the time; Tisa Hawkins, Dianna Witte; Heather Newsome, who sparked his love of writing; and Angela Powell, principal at Embassy Academy, who he said was the most pivotal.
Green said he enjoys arguing.
“It’s a wonderful pastime. People often think that lawyers argue, and we do, but more than we argue we are analyzing and it is stacking your analysis against mine and it’s persuasive. People call it argumentative, but it’s persuasive; whose analysis is more persuasive,” Green said.
He said he was born and raised in Odessa and came from very humble beginnings “and the education system in Odessa I would argue with anybody could go toe to toe with any other school district in the state. ECISD is really a jewel and protecting our teachers, protecting the way we’ve done things is so important because the teachers’ work matters.”
He said he could name every teacher he has ever had in ECISD “because every teacher I’ve ever had has impacted me in some way. That’s special to me and I want other students to know that they can do whatever they put their minds to,” he added.
At Hays, students used to recite a pledge every day that said education is the basis for a productive life and “therefore we will strive to be the absolute best we can be.”
“We said that every single morning; the whole school and I’m living that out right now. I just want students in Odessa to note that they can do whatever they want to do in this world, and for the teachers in Odessa to know that they are raising global leaders,” Green said.
