For Meares, anticipation replaces trepidation in trip back to Springfield

There was a point in Tracey Meares' life not long ago when she felt trepidation about even sitting on the outdoor steps of Springfield High School, from where she graduated in 1984.

Even a year after a public screening of the documentary "No Title for Tracey" at the Hoogland Center for the Arts and Meares receiving the valedictorian medal denied her almost four decades earlier, the trailblazing Yale College of Law professor still admitted it was a lot to process.

Meares is coming back to Springfield again April 6 to receive the Distinguished Alumni Award and to be inducted into the SHS Hall of Fame.

More:A Springfield High grad was snubbed the valedictorian title. 38 years later, she gets the honor

This time, she said, trepidation has melted into curiosity.

"I'm actually excited about (coming back to SHS), said Meares in a recent phone interview. "I don't really have that feeling anymore. Maybe (this will) close a door."

Meares, 56, confessed that she hasn't been on the inside of her old high school since her sophomore year at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign when she returned to visit a favorite English teacher, Bernice Rappel.

That was just two years removed from Meares being stung --"confused, really"-- by being passed over as class valedictorian, and instead earning "Top Student" honors with a white classmate despite having a higher grade point average.

Meares' story was documented in the film made by Maria Ansley and championed by Meares' sister, Dr. Nicole Florence, both of whom live in Springfield.

"Now I get to go back and I get to see it and walk those halls again," she said. "I barely remember what it looks like, so I'm prepared for it to be weird. I'm just excited to see the thing. And I really want to talk to the students - see where the kids are from."

There were times Meares felt anything but excited about SHS.

Florence admitted she had to coax her back there in 2019 to film an episode for her video podcast "Shine" in 2019, around the time the two started having conversations about what happened to Meares.

"You could tell she was uncomfortable (even being on campus)," Florence recalled.

By most accounts, Meares was well on her way to being SHS's first Black valedictorian.

She was taking advanced or weighted classes and a school secretary was tracking numbers and grades, including Meares'. Her counselor, Pauline Betts, told her she had the No. 1 rank.

All along, Meares said she had a great high school experience.

"I liked my teachers. I liked my friends. I was not one of those miserable, angsty teens," she said. "I was in marching band. On game days, we would wear our cheerleading uniforms. I was excited about that. I was president of the JETS (Junior Engineers Technicians and Scientists) Club. I was in it, all the way."

Meares' parents, Robert and Carolyn Blackwell, who still live in Springfield, told The State Journal-Register in a 2022 interview, that at some point a school dean had been in Betts' filing cabinet, rifling through Meares' records. Afterward, Betts put a lock on the cabinet.

SHS had named valedictorians and salutatorians up until 1984. It would be another eight years before the titles were given again.

"I really didn't know what was happening," Meares admitted. With two younger sisters coming through SHS, there was little rocking the boat, she added.

The Blackwells, who have long been involved in race relations in Springfield, believe systemic racism or institutional racism, which pervades the laws and regulations of education and other institutions, was behind the snub.

After that, "I sort of hived off that chapter of my life," Meares told University of California, Irvine professor Michele BratcherGoodwin on a podcast for Ms. Magazine.

Meares also recalled being confused about "why Springfield wouldn't want to claim me as their own. I was the hurrah person for Springfield."

Meares is now a nationally recognized expert on policing in urban communities. In 2014, President Barack Obama named her as a member of his Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

She became the first Black woman to be granted tenure at Yale College of Law and at the University of Chicago Law School, where she served from 1995 to 2007.

The documentary was born out of a girls weekend a couple of years ago with Florence and several of her friends, including Ansley, a photographer with Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.

When no one nibbled at pitches Ansley made about the project, she took it on herself as a first-time filmmaker.

Two legal teams now are working to get it vetted, insured and ready for release to the public, Ansley said.

It is also being updated, she added, to include the presentation of Meares' valedictorian medal.

That presentation, made by District 186 Superintendent Jennifer Gill after the first public screening of "No Title for Tracey," garnered national press for Meares from USA Today, the Washington Post, CNN, The Guardian and People Magazine.

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It also opened the floodgates, Meares said, for people to tell their own stories of being snubbed as valedictorians.

Meares is pondering writing a book, but she insisted it would have to include some of those stories as well as her own.

"Probably, the most interesting thing," she said, "was the outpouring of emails that I got: 'This happened to me, this happened to me.' That part was crazy.

"If (the book) is worth doing, it's worth doing to collect the stories and that really depends on Nicki and Maria getting the film out because if they get national distribution, then they can have people submit their stories."

Gill, who was a freshman at SHS when Meares was a senior, last year personally combed through old student records, some on microfiche, to verify Meares' ranking and championed giving Meares the medal she was denied.

Gill recalled showing a clip of the documentary, along with Florence, to a group of school superintendents from around the state earlier this year.

"There were tears in the room," she said.

Gill anticipated the same come Thursday.

"It will be an honor," Gill said, "to be there when she receives her induction into the SHS Hall of Fame, which is very much deserved."

Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788, sspearie@sj-r.com, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Yale Law scholar Tracey Meares will be inducted into the SHS Hall of Fame