Beyond the Moment
SCHOLAR
Tiara Davis
When Support Meets You Where You Are
For Tiara Davis, returning to school was not a straight line forward. It was a decision shaped by time, life, and experience.
02
Timeframe
Early 2000’s
Story told by
Scholars
Jarrett Adams’ life is often introduced through a single chapter: he was wrongfully convicted as a teenager and sentenced to 28 years in prison. He served nearly a decade before his conviction was overturned.
That experience stayed with him. But it was never the only thing he carried.
When Jarrett returned to school at South Suburban Community College, he was focused on rebuilding something tangible. Education was not symbolic. It was practical. A way to move forward with structure and intention.
During that time, Jarrett became a One Million Degrees Scholar. OMD was one of the places where he could focus on school while beginning to shape what came next. He was not treated as a story frozen in the past, but as a student moving through the present.
From there, the work continued.
Jarrett earned his law degree from Loyola University Chicago School of Law. He worked as an investigator with the Illinois Federal Defender’s Program, served as a public interest law fellow, and later joined the Innocence Project in New York. One of his early victories there was helping exonerate a man incarcerated in the same Wisconsin prison where Jarrett himself had once been held.
For Jarrett, that connection mattered. Not because it brought him back to what happened, but because it clarified what he wanted to do with what he had learned.
I did not want life to place a period where God only intended for a comma to be,” he has said. “It wasn’t going to be, ‘Jarrett Adams, a wrongly convicted, exonerated guy — the end.’ It had to be about the chapters I’m adding now.”
In 2017, Jarrett launched the Law Offices of Jarrett Adams, PLLC, expanding his practice across multiple cities. He also co-founded Life After Justice, a nonprofit focused on supporting people as they rebuild their lives after incarceration, addressing the isolation and uncertainty that often follow release.
Jarrett speaks openly about how society views young Black men and what is lost when potential is narrowed too early.
“If we only treated every Black kid like they had the potential and talent to be great, we wouldn’t see so many lives cut short or boxed in before they ever had a chance.”
Jarrett Adams
Today, Jarrett is a civil rights attorney, author, and advocate. His work continues to grow, shaped by the same clarity that guided his return to school years ago.
“What matters to me is what I’m doing now — helping people who were in the same spot I was in,” he said in a recent interview on The Breakfast Club. (Source)
Jarrett Adams’ journey does not resolve neatly. It keeps unfolding, through the work he chooses to take on and the people he continues to stand beside.
