Beth Hopkins ’77 and Late Husband, Larry, Honored With Named Wake Forest Residence Hall
Wake Forest University recently announced that it will name a residence hall in honor of Professor Beth Hopkins ’77 and her late husband, Dr. Larry Hopkins, two trailblazing Wake Forest alumni with deep ties to the University and Winston-Salem.
Professor Hopkins has had a decades-long career in law, education, and community outreach and was one of the first two Black female residential students at Wake Forest. Her late husband, a football star at Wake Forest, was a well-known physician who improved access and outcomes for women’s and neonatal health. Both served on Wake Forest’s Board of Trustees.
After graduating from William & Mary Law School, Professor Hopkins joined the Richmond civil rights law firm of Hill, Tucker & Marsh, where she worked for the legendary civil rights attorney Oliver Hill. She then moved to the Virginia Attorney General’s Office, where she worked mainly on education issues, and then spent a number of years as an Assistant United States Attorney, first in Richmond and later in Louisiana.
In 1985, Professor Hopkins returned to Wake Forest University, starting out in the university’s legal department, and going on to perform a number of roles over the next 30 years, including teaching both law and history. Most significantly, she became director of the Law School’s Public Interest and Pro Bono program. The pro bono apparatus that she developed for Wake Forest students and lawyers across North Carolina brought in corporations, law firms, and government agencies to provide opportunities for students, but also lawyers, to more robustly engage pro bono opportunities.
Always very involved in the community, Professor Hopkins has held leadership positions in the YWCA and the United Negro College Fund, among others.
The William & Mary Law School Alumni Association honored Professor Hopkins with the Citizen-Lawyer Award during the Law School’s Diploma Ceremony in May 2018. The award is the association’s highest recognition and is given annually to a graduate or friend of the Law School who has made “a lifetime commitment to citizenship and leadership.” During the prior spring, she return to campus to give the keynote at the 22nd Annual Oliver Hill Scholarship Brunch hosted by the Black Law Students Association.
Read more about the naming of the residence hall in the Wake Forest News.