Posted: November 27th, 2017 | By: Lisa Snedeker
Hazel Mack, the former leader of Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC), has been promoted as director of outreach at Wake Forest University School of Law. Mack has served as the interim director of outreach since October 2016.
“I am pleased to announce that Hazel Mack has agreed to become our permanent director of outreach,” said Ann Gibbs, associate dean of Administration and Student Services. “As we predicted a year ago when she stepped in as interim director, Hazel’s passion for serving the underserved, her legal expertise from years of practice with Legal Aid and her deep connections within the Winston-Salem community make her the perfect leader for the Office of Outreach.”
No stranger to the law school, Mack began working with Wake Forest Law students in the 1990s through The Legal Aid Society externship program and more recently with Professor Steve Virgil and the Community Law and Business Clinic.
“I look forward to continuing to work with law students on the impactful and important initiatives of both the Pro Bono Project and Public Interest Law programs,” Mack says.
Mack shaped her life around being able to help the less fortunate, practicing 35 years with LANC, where she focused on “helping poor clients deal with such issues as foreclosures, consumer scams and domestic violence” before retiring in March, the Winston-Salem Journal reported.
The Winston-Salem Journal reported that after attending Shaw University for about a year, Mack joined the Black Panther Party at the height of the civil rights movement. Along with Larry Little (JD ’88) and Nelson Malloy, Mack founded the Winston-Salem chapter of the Black Panther Party.
When describing her experience to Winston-Salem Monthly about her role with the Black Panthers, Mack stated, “we fed the hungry in the Free Breakfast Program, clothed those in need through the Free Clothing and Free Shoes programs, cared for the sick with the Free Ambulance Program and visited the imprisoned through the Free Transportation to Prison Program.”
Mack started at LANC in Wilson before moving to the Winston-Salem office, where she was eventually promoted from Senior Managing Attorney to Regional Managing Attorney.
