Vernellia Randall

Vernellia Ruth Randall was born March 6, 1948 in Gladewater, Texas. She was raised in Muleshoe, Texas and Amarillo, Texas. In 1966, she graduated from Carver High School. After earning an A.A. from Amarillo College she received a B.S. from the School of Nursing at the University of Texas as well as an M.S. of Nursing from the University of Washington and her J.D. from the Northwestern School of Law, Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. She is a single mother of two adult sons, Tshaka Randall (a law professor) and Issa Randall (a fine arts photographer). She raised them while receiving welfare, attending school and developing a legal career. She is proud of her accomplishments and has written an article about single-parenting.

Currently she is a law professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio with experience at Northwestern School of Law and Seattle University School of Law. She has many published works, including her most recent book, Dying While Black. She is also known as a public speaker on issues of health, race and representation of Blacks in the legal profession. She is an awarded webmaster of multiple sites including Race,Racism and the Law, Race, HealthCare and the Law, Online Academic Support for Law Students and The Whitest Law Schools. She is the co-founder with Tshaka Randall of "The JD Project', a non-profit dedicated to increasing the representation of people of color in the legal profession.

Her book Dying While Black provides understanding and insight into the bias of health care service based on race in the United States. Through thorough research she presents ideas of how slavery has contributed to poor health care for African Americans. She makes the bold statement that blacks are dying simply because they are black. The racial disparities in the American health system have led to shorter life expectancy, high death rates, infant mortality, low birth weight rates, and high disease rates.

She also focuses on the over-representation of whites in law schools as compared to the ratio of applications. In her second annual “Whitest Law Schools Report,” she found that “of the 177 historically white law schools, 158 seated a percentage of whites greater than the national application pool.”