Single Mom Who Was Formerly Incarcerated Passes Bar Exam on First Try: 'I Was Going to Get Right Back On Track'

Afrika Owes tells PEOPLE that she was arrested at 17 years old but notes how her experience incarcerated adds a "perspective" that she can "bring the real world"

Afrika Owes, a single mom in New York, just went viral for sharing her reaction to the news that she passed the bar exam after her first attempt.

The 30-year-old mother, who was formerly incarcerated, shared a TikTok video on Thursday, April 25, documenting her reaction to checking her bar exam results. As the Fordham University School of Law third-year student read her result, she shouted, "I passed! I passed!"

She then burst into tears reading the news. Once she stopped jumping around in excitement, Owes thanked her mother, grandmother, and son, Kairos, while holding up individual pictures of each of them.

She also thanked her family in her caption: "Thank you to my angels, my momma, my grandma. Thank you for my son, my brother, my family and my tribe."

"POV: You're a formerly incarcerated single mom who passed the bar early on the first try," she added in the text within the video.

She also shared the video on her personal Instagram account. In a touching caption celebrating her latest accomplishment, she noted how she's joined the "ranks of the 2% Black women attorneys in the U.S and the less than 1% of formerly incarcerated black attorneys in the U.S."

Following her viral video — which has garnered 2.9 million views — Owes shares with PEOPLE more about her journey from Rikers Island to becoming a Fordham Law graduate.

She tells PEOPLE that she "always wanted to be a lawyer," explaining that she grew up in a "low-income," "single-parent household" with her late mother.

"Despite our circumstances, she always was an advocate for herself, [and] other people in the community and that was always a skill and a value that was embedded in me," Owes says. "So I knew I always wanted to go to law school for that reason."

Owes tells PEOPLE that she was arrested at 17 years old but notes how her experience incarcerated adds a "perspective" that she can "bring the real world really in conjunction with the law."

"I encourage people like me to get into a law or any space because personal experience is such a valuable asset," says Owes.

Owes was charged as part of a gang-related conspiracy case in 2011, reported The New York Times. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy and weapons possession, both felonies. She was later sentenced under the New York Youthful Offender program and served six months on Rikers Island with five years of probation after her release, but "only wound up doing two years."

During her sentence, she studied for both the SAT and GED. By the time she was released, she was able to complete high school and headed to college, where she completed her first two years while finishing her probation. Per her blog, Owes graduated cum laude from Hobart & William Smith Colleges, with a degree in Sociology and minors in Africana Studies and Public Policy.

"It was never a doubt in my mind that I was going to figure out how I was going to get right back on track," she tells PEOPLE.

Owes tells PEOPLE of her family and community in Harlem, N.Y., that they were monumental to her path to law school. After she was released, her community "monitored" her in an effort "to make sure that [she] went right back on [her] path."

"There [were] so many people that believed in me and I said, 'You know what, I would hate for this to be in vain.' "

As she remains thankful to her community, she tells PEOPLE that she hopes that her "story inspires people to not think of themselves as outcasts in this space, but as superheroes."

She continues: "There's folks that are unique, like, 'Oh, I have something that other people don't have.' And not to see you as a burden but to see it as another leverage point to make them an asset in this profession."

Related: Guyanese Immigrant Raised by a Single Mom Working 2 Jobs Gets Into All 8 Ivy League Universities: 'I'm Still in Disbelief'

Owes will graduate from Fordham University School of Law in May. She will be working in tax law at a big law firm and hopes to get a judicial clerkship later in her career.

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The pass rate for February's exam in New York was just 42%, overall for 3,962 examinees and 59% for first-time test takers, per the National Conference of Bar Examiners. Additionally, according to the American Bar Association, the pass rate for first-time Black test takers was about 57% in 2022, while their White counterparts had an average of 83%.

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