Kiah Duggins was returning from visiting her mother, who was undergoing surgery in Kansas, when the civil rights attorney was killed in a plane crash in Washington, D.C this week.

The 30-year-old civil rights lawyer was scheduled to join the faculty at Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C., this fall, the university said Thursday.

A Harvard Law School alum known for her pro bono legal work was one of the 67 people who died Wednesday when an airliner collided with a military helicopter in Washington, D.C. , was set to join the teaching staff at Howard University School of Law in the fall, the school said in a Facebook post. She graduated from the school in 2021.

Several people online paid tribute to Kiah Duggins, a 30-year-old civil rights attorney and former Miss Kansas contestant who was identified as one of the 64 people on board the American Airlines flight,

When I found out she got into Harvard Law. I mean, of course, she did,” one of her undergraduate professors said.

Civil rights attorney Kiah Duggins was among the 64 passengers and crew on the American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas, to Washington, D.C., that plunged into the Potomac River Wednesday evening after colliding with a military helicopter.

"Kiah believed in radical love, unwavering truth, and the fight for a better world," family member Aisha Duggins said. The Wichita native was 30.

Kiah Duggins was an attorney with Civil Rights Corps. She grew up in Wichita and attended Wichita East High School. In 2015, she represented the Miss Kansas Organization as Miss Butler County. Former Sedgwick County Commissioner Lacey Cruse described Duggins as “a brave and beautiful soul,

A woman who made a name for herself in Wichita and was in the process of doing the same thing in Washington was on the plane that crashed in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. Kiah Duggins was a civil rights attorney who worked with a legal group in D.