Joyce Hughes, JD

Joyce A. Hughes began her career at Northwestern in 1975, and she was the first African-American female to be tenured in any department at Northwestern in 1979.

Hughes served on the Chicago Board of Education by appointment of Chicago’s first female mayor Jane Byrne. During this time the board elected its first African-American president. Hughes was also a member of the lawyers’ committee to elect Northwestern Law graduate Harold Washington as the first black mayor of Chicago. Hughes wrote about the difficulties in her early day teaching law in “Neither a Whisper Nor a Shout,” a chapter in the book edited by J. Clay Smith, Jr. “Rebels in Law: Voices in History of Black Women Lawyers.”