After nearly 40 years.

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Caption: AFTER NEARLY 40 YEARS, Florida A&M once again bestowed law degrees when the university held its recent commencement. The last class of the FAMU College of Law graduated in 1968 after the state failed to provide funding for the then-accredited school in 1966. The state reestablished the historically black university's law school in 2002, and the first students of the inaugural class received their degrees at a ceremony at the university's main campus in Tallahassee. The graduates also were recognized at a hooding ceremony in Orlando, where the law school is located. Fifty-five students from the law school received their degrees. "The law school's participation in this year's graduation ceremony is not only of great historic significance to this university, but it is of even greater symbolic significance," said Carlos Woody, president of the Student Bar Association. "As a member of the 'second inaugural class: being able to participate in the graduation on the main campus will represent a continuation of a rich legacy that began some 56 years ago." Robert J. Grey, Jr., president of the ABA, was the keynote speaker for the event: "Society has to reflect the texture, the culture, the diversity of its people in the most critical profession to the safeguarding of liberty that we have."