This study deals with academic and professional experiences of ex-graduate students living in slum areas in Brazil. This research has its focus on a group of professionals that are residents of the Jacarezinho favela of Rio de Janeiro. The goal of this work is to know the effectiveness and the limits of higher education as a mechanism to ensure civil rights, with emphasis on the professional slum area residents of Rio de Janeiro. The individuals presented in this work are graduate from Rio de Janeiro colleges, who enrolled in the Prep-course for the Black and the Poor (PVNC) after the year 2000. Among them there are professionals that earned their places in the most prestigious universities of Rio de Janeiro, particularly in carreers considered of high academic profile, social and symbolic value, such as: Law School, Psychology and Engineering. As residents of slum areas and members of low income families, these individuals denied the largely accepted ―social determinism‖ that prescribes personal, academic and professional failure for the members of this social group. However, the hypothesis that guides this work is that the access to higher education, alone, does not ensure to the slum area residents — mostly African-descendents— their civil rights, a reality that exposes the limits of one of the most important political agendas of contemporary social resistance movements.