Yale Univ. Library- Shining the Light on Truth: Early Black Students at Yale.
Biography

Roger Demosthenes O’Kelly was born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1880 and also spent some of his early life in South Carolina. When he was nine years old, he became deaf as a result of scarlet fever. Later, his vision was impaired due to a football injury.

He communicated primarily through sign language and through writing. He graduated from the North Carolina State School for the Deaf and Blind for Negros, then completed a bachelor of laws degree from Shaw University in 1909. He was licensed by the North Carolina Supreme Court. In 1912.

After working briefly on a tunnel drilling project in New York City, he entered the Yale Law School.
He was only the second deaf student to attend Yale. He later described the way he navigated lecture-based law classes:

"Some of my classmates had been newspaper reporters and they took down the lecture verbatim, transcribed them, and loaned me their copies. I recopied them and have them today. So I had no trouble in keeping up. The examinations were conducted by writing as are those given by our state Supreme Court."

While a student at Yale, he worked through the Yale student employment bureau. He graduated from Yale in 1912 and briefly worked on another tunnel-drilling project in Montreal, Canada, before returning to North Carolina. Back home he briefly worked as a teacher at the North Carolina School for Colored Deaf and Blind in Raleigh, and then decided to open his own legal service firm called O'Kelly's Legal Bureau in Raleigh, North Carolina.

As a legal specialist he provided legal services for local business people in Raleigh, NC and Granite Quarry, NC. relating to domestic relations, real estate, corporations, and abstracts of title. He had a long and successful career as an attorney serving the Black and white community of Raleigh, Wake county area.

He married Goldie Euzelia Weaver in 1920, they did not have any children. Goldie was born in Hertford, North Carolina on 28 Feb 1900 to Hezekiah Weaver and Eugenia Rooks.
She passed away on Feb 1994 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA.

He was a founding member of the Negro State Bar Association of North Carolina in 1922.

O’Kelly died at age 82 on July 11, 1962, in Georgetown, South Carolina.
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Full Name: Roger Demosthenes O'Kelly
Family Name: O'Kelly
Yale Affiliation: Graduate of Yale Law School, 1912
Birth Date: 1880
Birth Place: Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
Educated At: Yale Law School, Shaw University, the North Carolina School for Colored Deaf and Blind
Places Lived: Columbia, South Carolina, New York City, New York, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Salisbury, North Carolina, Raleigh, North Carolina.
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Other sources: Wikipedia; Ancestry dot com