Laura-Louise Rice and Shelby Singleton, both third-year students at the University of Virginia School of Law, have won the Gregory H. Swanson Award, given in honor of the first Black student at UVA.

The award was presented to Rice and Singleton on Thursday by Dean Leslie Kendrick ’06 at an event commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Chief Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn ’86 of the Supreme Court of Virginia delivered the keynote address.

Gregory Hayes Swanson was already a practicing attorney when he applied to attend UVA Law School to pursue an LL.M. degree. While his admission was supported by the Law School’s faculty, it was opposed by the Board of Rectors. Swanson would ultimately win a federal lawsuit and make history by enrolling at UVA Law in fall 1950.

To honor his legacy, each year the Law School honors a student or students who demonstrate the qualities that Swanson embodied, including courage, perseverance and a commitment to justice.

This year marked the first time since 2018, the inaugural year that the Swanson Award was handed out, that there were two recipients. Here are their stories.

Laura-Louise Rice ’25

Laura-Louise Rice
Photo by Julia Davis

Growing up in South Carolina, law school wasn’t front of mind for Rice. “My dream was always to go and be a professional dancer on Broadway,” she said.

Her grandfather, though, encouraged her to consider the law as a profession.

“There are so many people that you can help,” Rice recalled him telling her.

She became interested in public health while in high school and enrolled at the University of South Carolina to pursue a program they offered where she could, in essence, design her own interdisciplinary major. Rice would graduate in 2022 with a degree in medical humanities and public policy.

While completing her degree, her thesis director told Rice that, if she could do it all over again, she would attend law school. It was a familiar suggestion, one Rice said she had never completely ruled out, but now she began to see how the study of law could be an effective pathway toward her goal of fighting for health justice.

“Access to health care for minority and low-income communities has always been something I’ve been really interested in and really passionate about,” she said. “And I believe that it’s something that everyone deserves, no matter where they come from or what they look like.”

Rice enrolled at UVA Law as a recipient of the prestigious, full-tuition Karsh-Dillard Scholarship and has continually embraced the opportunity to take on leadership roles at the school. She was elected president of the First-Year Council, president of the Black Law Students Association during her second year, and this academic year she has served as president of the Student Bar Association.

Rice said that she is driven by a desire to make an enduring impact.

“The opportunities that I get to take advantage of today are opportunities that people that looked like me 30, 40, 50 years ago were not able to take advantage of. So, who am I to not do absolutely everything I can to leave my mark on any space that I enter?” she said.

In a letter nominating her for the Swanson Award, Professor Bertrall Ross, who taught and mentored Rice, highlighted her efforts to build a welcoming law school community through her work with the Black Law Students Association.

“Laura-Louise created a sense of belonging for Black law students, which is a central reason why they thrive here in a way that is unique among law schools,” he wrote. 

Ross also lauded Rice’s steady leadership of the Student Bar Association during a time of “tremendous global and domestic tumult” in which she was able to work with the administration to ensure students were given “a critical outlet for expression while preserving the special cohesiveness and collegiality of the UVA Law community.” 

In her nominating letter, fellow third-year student Courtney Douglas wrote that she knew Rice was “destined” to lead the Student Bar Association from their first conversation, back in August 2022 when they were both at a gathering for the Community Fellows Program after enrolling at UVA Law.

“She was already sharing reflections on how legal education at Virginia and beyond could evolve to be more inclusive of Black students, how our Law School community could promote positive mental health practices, and how we could all simultaneously stay true to our values and open our minds to other viewpoints,” Douglas wrote.

Rice described Swanson as someone whose legacy is integral to the story of UVA Law.

“I stand in the Law School now because Gregory Swanson stood in the Law School,” she said, also citing the contributions of other trailblazing alumni, including John Merchant ’58, UVA Law’s first Black graduate, and Elaine Jones ’70, the first Black woman to graduate from the Law School.

“It’s all of those people who have walked this path ahead of me, and I think that I am a walking embodiment of what their dreams were,” Rice said.

As for her own dream, she said her ultimate aspiration is to start a health justice nonprofit organization. It’s a goal that few who have seen her in action would be surprised to see her reach.

“Laura-Louise’s lifelong ambition is to attend to those who have been neglected, to uplift those who have been denied voice and to serve those who do not have the basic human rights of health care, housing and education. From what I have seen of Laura-Louise during her time at UVA Law, I have no doubt that she will succeed," Ross wrote.

Shelby Singleton
Photo by Jesús Pino

Shelby Singleton ’25

Singleton said her time as a Posse Foundation scholar “plays a huge part in my story.”

She started the leadership program while still a high school senior in the Atlanta area and continued it during her college years at George Washington University. The group discussions, which addressed diversity, leadership and how to effect change in society, made a significant impact on her worldview.

“I credit a lot of my understanding of what justice means based off of that group and that training,” she said.

After graduating from college, “I realized that I wanted to attend law school because I cared deeply about trying to create a society that is more just for everybody,” she said, adding that around that same period the national racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd occurred, which, she said, “felt like a personal call for me.”

After enrolling at UVA Law, Singleton achieved her two main goals as a law student.

In 2023, she interned at the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the next summer interned with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund — the same group that assisted Swanson with his lawsuit in 1950.

Another highlight of her time at UVA, she said, was a speech from Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative.

“He just spoke from the heart about how he felt his role in civil rights work was a divine calling. That’s something that really resonated with me,” Singleton said.

Singleton has been an active participant in UVA clinics. During her time in the State and Local Government Policy Clinic, she worked on multiple bills, including legislation that would eliminate court costs for juveniles or their parents in prosecutions involving traffic infractions.

In November, she was part of a group from the International Human Rights Law Clinic that visited and observed the work of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, a trip that she said left a deep impact.

“Watching how people from all over the world come together to hold each other accountable in accordance with a global commitment to justice was an honor,” Singleton said.

Chinh Q. Le ’00, a visiting professor of practice at the Law School, has taught Singleton and collaborated with her on projects for the Program in Law and Public Service. Singleton, he wrote in a letter nominating her, “is one of the most intellectually curious and engaged students” he has worked with during his time at UVA Law.

He added: “Shelby’s contributions to the Law School community are singular and special. She has enhanced the academic and social experience of her peers, and she has inspired many of them, and me, to be better versions of ourselves.”

Third-year student C. Colby Woodis got to know Singleton during their time together on the executive board of the Law Christian Fellowship. Singleton, he wrote in his nominating letter, “continually exudes unwavering courage and a rock-solid commitment to justice.”

“Shelby’s commitment to justice is commendable, and she is always the first to question whether the ways we are pursuing justice are equitable in reach and broad enough in scope to meet the needs of the most vulnerable,” he added.

After graduating, Singleton will begin a position with the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, a nonprofit law firm in Durham, North Carolina, motivated by the same commitment to justice that inspired her to go to law school — and that 75 years ago led Gregory Swanson to open doors for generations to come.

“To have this gift of understanding the law and peeking behind the curtain creates an obligation and a duty to fix what we notice is broken,” she said.

Previous Gregory H. Swanson Award Winners

Founded in 1819, the University of Virginia School of Law is the second-oldest continuously operating law school in the nation. Consistently ranked among the top law schools, Virginia is a world-renowned training ground for distinguished lawyers and public servants, instilling in them a commitment to leadership, integrity and community service.

Media Contact