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From the lib Boston Globe

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Excerpt:

In the fall of 1989, when Obama returned to campus for his second year, students were protesting the lack of minority law school faculty. They staged sit-ins in the law library, camped outside the office of Dean Robert C. Clark, and carried signs that read “Diversity Now” and “Homogeneity Feeds Hatred.”

The tensions continued the following spring, reaching a high when Derrick A. Bell Jr., the first tenured black professor at the school, resigned in protest. Obama was a member of the Black Law Students Association, which organized many demonstrations that spring. But he was less confrontational than some of his peers.

“Barack was a stabilizing influence in that he would absolutely support those efforts, but was also someone who could discuss and debate them with students or faculty who had different views,” said Professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr., who became Harvard’s seventh tenured black professor in 1993.

In February 1990, when the time came to elect a new president of the law review, Obama was initially reluctant, said Nix Hines.

The presidency seemed better suited for careerist types who were aiming for positions at top-flight law firms, Obama told her at the time. The son of a black Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, he wanted to return to his work in Chicago as a community organizer.

“I was surprised because I knew he was very popular and well-regarded and obviously had the ability to do the job,” Nix Hines said.

But at a dinner at Obama’s apartment, an older black student challenged Obama and other black students to compete for the job. “And I do remember Barack saying that was the moment he finally decided, ‘I’m going to do this,’ “ said Mack.

The law review president’s election is a fussy affair, part intellectual debate, part frat house ritual. Obama was one of 19 candidates. As the 61 editors not running for the job debated the merits of the candidates behind closed doors on a Sunday morning in late February, the hopefuls cooked them breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Every few hours, the editors winnowed the list further, until just after midnight, when only Obama and a 24-year-old Harvard graduate named David Goldberg remained contenders .

At about 12:30 a.m., the editors called Obama into the room, told him he had won, and broke into applause. Mack, another black editor, pulled Obama in for a hug.

“It was a hard hug, and it lasted a while,” Obama told the Harvard Law Record, the school newspaper, at the time. “At that point, I realized this was not just an individual thing. . . but something much bigger.”

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/01/28/at_harvard_law_a_unifying_voice/