
{"id":10783,"date":"2010-06-03T13:54:43","date_gmt":"2010-06-03T21:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=10783"},"modified":"2010-06-03T14:33:41","modified_gmt":"2010-06-03T22:33:41","slug":"ashley-osment-a-life-for-social-justice-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/06\/03\/ashley-osment-a-life-for-social-justice-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashley Osment: a life for social justice, joy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Taylor Sisk<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>Staff Writer<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\nCHAPEL HILL  \u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00c2\u00a0A bright-eyed, cheerful presence; a force. Skilled legal strategist and tactician. Fierce champion of justice and advocate for an underdog. Pragmatist, optimist, relisher of the richness of life. A musician. A mother. <\/p>\n<p>Civil-rights lawyer Ashley Osment, 46, died Friday at 9:30 p.m. in her Chapel Hill home. The cause of death was ovarian cancer. She will be sorely missed by the community she had made her home for nearly three decades. Osment put her shoulder to the task of making this community, and the world, a more socially just one, and relentlessly inched that task forward.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153She never allowed you to think you couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d her longtime friend and fellow civil-rights lawyer Mark Dorosin said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You just have to stay engaged.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Born in West Asheville and raised a stone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s throw from the Jackson County courthouse in downtown Sylva, Osment remained the mountain minister\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s daughter, the echoes of those Smokies in her voice, the big open smile and appraising eyes. While still a teenager, she bought three acres of land near Highlands and with the help of her grandfather and friends built a cabin there that became a place she treasured throughout her life, and where she returned each Easter to relax with family and friends.<\/p>\n<p>She won a scholarship to Western Carolina University for an essay she wrote about mountain music called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No Better Gift,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but decided after her freshman year to come to UNC, where she majored in history. She then went to work in the Washington, D.C. offices of the Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s International League for Peace and Freedom, but returned after three years and continued to make her presence known in the community \u00e2\u20ac\u201c first as the manager of Internationalist Books and then, after attaining a law degree from UNC, as a civil-rights lawyer in practice with her future husband Al McSurely. <\/p>\n<p>Among Osment\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s considerable achievements was a lawsuit she won for the UNC Housekeepers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Association, in which then-Chancellor Michael Hooker agreed to a settlement of more than a million dollars that included pay raises, career training, child care and recognition of the union as the housekeepers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 representative.<\/p>\n<p>In 2005, Osment joined the UNC Center for Civil Rights, where she took on educational inequality. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Through her fierce sense of justice and her disarming personal style,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d center co-founder and dean of the UNC Law School Jack Boger wrote last week, Osment earned the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153full confidence of black NAACP veterans and Latino activists on the one hand, and Harvard and UCLA empirical social scientists, Ford Foundation program officers, and nationally renowned legal scholars on the other. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153With an inimitable cheerfulness, candor and open personal style, joined with a brilliant mind and relentless use of sophisticated legal and social scientific tools to redress injustices, Ashley led the UNC Center\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s advocacy efforts in public education for nearly five years.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Even as cancer spread throughout her body, Osment continued with her work. In the spring of 2010, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the NAACP awarded her its Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award. <\/p>\n<p>But it was perhaps as a mother to Sunny, now 13, that she found her fullest expression. She didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hide the manifestations of her illness from her daughter. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153She knows,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Osment told <em>The Citizen<\/em> in March. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153She definitely knows. She knows how many milligrams of Oxycontin I take. She and I are very connected. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t deceive her if I wanted to.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>And her ability to balance and blend it all astounded and inspired those around her. <\/p>\n<p>Dorosin, a colleague of Osment\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s at the Center for Civil Rights, said: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153She had this innate ability to focus, at all times, on <em>everything<\/em> that was important to her. She maintained her passion and commitment to it all. Everyone admired that in her.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Of her life with cancer, she told <em>The Citizen<\/em>, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What I know is that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m more conscious of who I love being around,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d citing her family, kids in general and dogs.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m realizing now what an inspiration she was to me in both my professional and personal lives,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dorosin said on Tuesday. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I feel a sense of rededication.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_10786\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10786\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2010\/06\/03\/ashley-osment-a-life-for-social-justice-joy\/dsc_0235\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10786\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/DSC_0235.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"DSC_0235\" width=\"500\" height=\"335\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10786\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/DSC_0235.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/DSC_0235-113x75.jpg 113w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/DSC_0235-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/DSC_0235-360x241.jpg 360w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/DSC_0235-119x80.jpg 119w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/DSC_0235-120x80.jpg 120w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-10786\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">PHOTO BY AVA BARLOW. Ashley Osment with her daughter, Sunny, and husband, Al McSurely.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A bright-eyed, cheerful presence; a force. Skilled legal strategist and tactician. Fierce champion of justice and advocate for an underdog. Pragmatist, optimist, relisher of the richness of life. A musician. A mother. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10783"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10834,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10783\/revisions\/10834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}