Defying the Odds

Alvin Sykes was a high school dropout. He suffered from epilepsy and mental illness. He was also homeless for large stretches of his life.

And yet, despite the countless challenges he faced, he became an esteemed litigator who was highly respected by members of both political parties.

Sykes, 64, died earlier this month of complications from a fall that left him paralyzed, according to The New York Times. But his story has several key lessons for us as leaders.

Sykes never went to law school, instead mostly teaching himself legal procedure by going to the reference section of a public library in his native Kansas City.

His impassioned work over the better part of five decades covered many subjects ranging from cold case murders to laws around animal cruelty.

In 1983, he persuaded the Justice Department to re-open the case of a Black musician killed in a Kansas City park, which ultimately led to a conviction after a previous acquittal, according to The Times.

Sykes later spent years researching the 1955 cold case murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi and presented an argument that eventually led to the Justice Department’s re-opening of the case.

In 2005, Sykes helped write a bill to fund a Civil Rights cold-case initiative within the FBI. When the legislation met heavy opposition from Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, the two finally met for several hours, and Coburn relented before becoming a key advocate for it, according to The Times.

In March 2019, Sykes was paralyzed after he fell at a Kansas City train station, but he continued his legal work for several months while bed-ridden.

Sykes had every reason to grow cynical after the many hardships he was presented, but he instead worked with passion and vigor to teach himself what a law school never did.

He could’ve become frustrated and given up when Sen. Coburn initially dismissed his many attempts to meet with him, but he persisted and eventually won the senator over.

He could’ve eschewed the Civil Rights cold cases of decades past, knowing it’d be difficult to garner enough political support to get them re-opened.

But Alvin Sykes never did any of these things. He remained shrewd, passionate and resilient until the very end despite having every reason not to.

Sykes’ life was one of remarkable consequence. May he rest in peace.