Eboné Ivory
, a 2L student at Charleston School of Law, was recently given the ‘Hope is Activism’ award from the Hive Community Center, a survivor-driven, culturally specific peer advocacy organization helping women and girls in South Carolina overcome the trauma of sexual assault, intimate partner violence and stalking.
“It’s not about the accolades or the awards,” she explained. “Those are not the things that come to mind when I do the work. The people I’m serving are at the center of my mind when I do the work. It’s not about self-gratification. It’s about supporting people the way you hope that someone would support you.”
If you know Ebone Ivory, you know that humility, compassion, and kindness flow from her. You can hear it when she speaks, see it when she smiles, and witness it in the graceful way she carries herself.
But that’s where it gets tricky. Make no mistake, Ivory is pure at heart. She is selfless. She is not attempting to trick anyone into anything. But her outward character is exceeded only by her beautiful mind. That’s what makes it tricky.
You would never know she has a disability unless she told you.
“I’m a hearing impaired student,” she said. “I grew up with bilateral hearing loss and the challenges of being a deaf and hard of hearing child impact my everyday life. I can only hear 38 percent in both of my ears. I’m aided with hearing aids and so what I often tell people is hearing aids amplify what I can hear, they don’t clarify. I learned to read lips and that’s primarily how I communicate with people.”
Ivory reflected on her experience of growing up in public schools as a hearing impaired student.
“There were moments throughout my childhood where teachers didn’t really want to deal with my disabilities so they would try to discard me and put me in classrooms with students who had learning disabilities,” she said. “Physical disabilities and learning disabilities are two very different things.”
Her grades provided clear evidence of that. Ivory was “wildly outperforming the requirements,” she said. “My mother demanded her daughter be placed in a learning environment where she could be challenged in advanced classes.”
Ivory remembers her mother coming to her school carrying a “thick binder, it had to be four inches thick, with every record throughout my entire life that showed every IEP meeting, every hearing test record, every doctor’s note referral, just to be able to adequately advocate on my behalf.”
Ivory vividly remembers when she arrived at college, “a professor who would like to play videos in class and the requirement was that you must put closed captioning on the screen,” said Ivory. “He refused. He said putting on closed captioning would ruin the experience for the other students. He recommended that I just not come to class which was a complete violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I had to engage with our office of disabilities and advocate for myself. We eventually got it settled.”
The most pivotal point in my entire life was the moment that I found my voice. Being a hearing impaired student and being the introvert, I was not really jumping to speak and interact.
“When I was in middle school I had endured some bullying because of my hearing loss and that really took a toll on me,” she said.
I was a member of the Boys and Girls Club I was encouraged to participate in the Youth of the Year program, which is an oratorical competition. It was a space for me to share my story and what had happened to me, how I got to where I am today.
As a teenager, Ivory traveled to speak to other clubs — Rotary Club, Legion’s Club, the Kwanzaa Club, groups, churches — sharing her story and seeing the impact it had on people. “That’s when I had the a-ha moment,” she said. “If you share your story, you have no idea how much you can move people. That’s when I learned the value of advocacy — zealous advocacy. After that experience is when I decided I wanted to go to law school.”
My parents really showed me what advocacy was, but once I got to college, I had to learn how to advocate for myself. I was no longer under their wings and so I had to learn to speak up.
To advocate for myself in situations where I felt extremely uncomfortable. I’m so used to speaking up for other people, but not necessarily myself. That’s a different scenario to be in, but that occurred my sophomore year, it was an honors course. I, you know, finished, I did well in the class, but that moment was a moment Pivotal in my college career because I invested the rest of my time at the University of Alabama doing disability advocacy work and so I became the director of disability services for the Student Government Association and I created programs and curriculums … there were students who I had, who had learning disabilities, who had extreme cases of autism or Down Syndrome, who were in a specialized program at the university for them to start college. While they were integrated into the academic portions of the university, they weren’t integrated into the social life. A lot of them wanted to be normal college students. They wanted to join a sorority or a fraternity, or clubs or sports.
Just because someone is different than you, learns different than you, or looks different than you, doesn’t mean or justify their exclusion.
I spend a lot of time training other students on what equity looks like and what inclusion looks like. Just because equality is not necessarily the most beneficial way to go about things because we’re not equal, we are uniquely different and that is the beauty of humanity. There are so many other identities that make us unique our religions our disabilities our nationalities, I think that is the beauty of coming together and being in spaces like law school where you can, um, contribute different perspectives to one conversation.
I think when you’ve been doing that your entire life, you don’t know anything else.
I work so hard every day just to hear what someone has to say and overworking my ears, reading your lips, I’m doing all that work just to show up for you, just to hear what you have to say. We can have different, differing opinions. For me, it’s important to know that I’m listening to you, and I’m trying to comprehend and understand what you’re saying and see the value in that, rather than listening to try to respond or regurgitate something back to you … allowing and encouraging people that their voices are heard and valuable. I think it’s just so foundational to who I am and how I show up. It weaves into my actual being and how I think and process things.
I set out looking for a nonprofit to invest my time in. I found The Hive through a friend who knew of the founder. I was blown away. I’ve never been so impressed with the nonprofit that really was thinking about survivors of sexual assault. They thought of everything that a survivor would go through. It really touched me because when I was in undergrad I was a RA which I consider the first line of defense in dormitories. We’re faced with grueling things — from suicides, sexual assault, hate crimes — and I had to deal with the situation regarding sexual assault and that was a pivotal moment in my life.
It was a lot to endure. There is truly nothing like watching someone in so much pain and knowing that’s nothing you can do to take it away. That story sticks with me. I personally am not a survivor; I want to support survivors in any way that I can. That is why I invested so much time into this specific nonprofit.
Witnessing healthy changes in people’s lives where the deepest hurts and pains, they can come out of that and it’s never good what they went through. It can be a positive force in their life to change other people’s lives.
“It’s deeply rooted in my family,” said Ivory. “My grandparents were both pillars of their community and they were highly respected because they invested in so many people. You don’t need a favor in return. Just show up and support the people.”
“My mother grew up in the church and my mother raised me and my sibling in the church and so humility and compassion. My faith was at the very center and through church we did a lot of community service. The joy of knowing that you can make someone’s day a little bit better is exhilarating to me.”
Both of my parents, I respect them so much. My dad always challenged me. I grew up having to recite The Excuses Poem. He would say, “Excuses are the tools of the incompetent, and those who use them often are seldom good at anything.” Every time I try to have an excuse as a child to make me recite the poem. An excuse was not valid. I could do as much as the person next to me. Just because it was a little bit more challenging doesn’t mean I wasn’t equipped to do it.
I wanted to reinvest in my community and be a part of the growth, because South Carolina has so much potential. I wanted to be a part of that. So, I decided that I wanted to go to law school and Charleston’s always been my favorite city.
I am also really into historic preservation and cultural preservation and Charleston is the number one preservation city in the country. It was really a perfect place for me to be. My career interest is primarily in commercial real estate and corporate transactions, but I have a very niche interest in historic preservation.
Because in this profession, it’s so important to care about and use our intelligence to serve people beyond ourselves. I’m excited to be in law school and to graduate and to know that my skill set can only further support the communities that I work with outside of my profession.
We all approach the law in different ways. It was important to me that I spoke up for other people. I’ve done a lot of different advocacy work and community service. It’s just about showing up. for people and making sure that their voices are heard.
Charleston School of Law will host its Winter Commencement ceremony on Saturday, December 14 at 5:00 p.m. at the Charleston Museum Auditorium.
In observance of the Christmas and New Year holidays, Charleston School of Law School offices will be closed from Saturday, December 14 through Friday, January 3, 2025.
