In the United States, February has been designated Black History Month – a time to recognize and celebrate the achievements and contributions of Black men and women to American society. The legal industry has been shaped by so many groundbreaking Black attorneys who have worked to make the field more inclusive, diverse, and progressive – learn more about a few of them below.
Charlotte Ray, an alumna of Howard University, was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar on February 27, 1872, making her not only the first female admitted to the D.C. Bar, but the first Black female attorney in the United States. Ray was also the first woman to practice and argue in front of the District of Columbia Supreme Court. Ray’s most well known case, Gadley v. Gadley, was also groundbreaking, as the defendant, Martha Gadley, was an illiterate Black woman who filed for divorce from her husband on the basis of domestic abuse. At the time, the courts still cared little about domestic violence, and even less about an uneducated Black woman, but Ray was a staunch advocate for Gadley and achieved victory on her behalf in front of the District of Columbia Supreme Court in 1875.
Unfortunately, though Ray was said to be “one of the best lawyers on corporations in the country,” racial and gender prejudice plagued Ray and she was forced to close her practice not long after Gadley. She went on to become a public school teacher in Brooklyn, and was an active member of the National Association of Colored Women and attended the National Women’s Suffrage 1876 Convention in New York.
Nonetheless, Ray’s bar admission paved the way for other female attorneys across the U.S. who pointed to her admission as precedent for their own.
Jane Bolin made history as the first Black female judge in the United States, but she was also the first Black woman to graduate from Yale Law School and the first to join the New York City Bar Association and the New York City Law Department.
Bolin, originally from Poughkeepsie, New York, enrolled at Wellesley College in Massachusetts at the age of 16, becoming one of only two Black freshmen there. After graduating near the top of her class from Wellesley, Bolin enrolled in Yale Law School, where she was the only Black student and one of just three women. Shortly after graduation, Bolin moved to New York City and eventually joined the New York City Corporation Counsel’s office, where she regularly appeared before the City’s Domestic Relations court. In 1939, Bolin was appointed judge of the New York Domestic Relations Court, where she served for four decades until she was forced into retirement (though Bolin made it clear she would’ve held her seat had she been allowed).
Bolin was a passionate activist for children’s rights and served on the boards of the NAACP, the National Urban League, and the Child Welfare League, among other organizations.
Charles Hamilton Houston, also known as “The Man Who Killed John Crow,” was an influential Black lawyer who served as the Dean of Howard University School of Law and the first NAACP special counsel. Houston earned his title for his role in dismantling Jim Crow laws – state and local statutes that legalized and enforced racial segregation in the Southern U.S. from the late 1800s through the mid-20th century. Houston’s efforts often focused on demonstrating the inherent inequality resulting from the “separate but equal” doctrine. As the NAACP’s special counsel, Houston crafted litigation strategies to dismantle racial housing covenants and desegregate schools. He argued several major civil rights cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, including leading an all-black legal team in an appeal for a defendant who had been convicted or murder in lower court by an all-white jury. Houston also helped found the National Bar Association when the American Bar Association refused to admit Black lawyers.
Houston passed away in 1950, but his legacy stretched well beyond his years, and he inspired many other Black civil rights attorneys, including Thurgood Marshall, Houston’s former student.
Thurgood Marshall was a prominent civil rights activist and the first Black justice on the United States Supreme Court.
After graduating from Howard University School of Law, one of Marshall’s first legal victories included a suit in which the University of Maryland, a school from which he himself was rejected because he was not white, was accused of violating the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which requires all U.S. states to grant all persons “equal protection of the laws.”
In 1940, Marshall founded the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of America’s leading organizations for racial justice to this day. Over the next two decades, Marshall earned acclaim as one of the most creative and effective lawyers in the country, winning 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark civil rights case that declared racial segregation in schools to be unconstitutional.
In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court and he served for 24 years until his retirement in 1991. Throughout his time on the court, Justice Marshall was a staunch liberal and a strong supporter of minority and civil rights. Marshall’s law clerks during his tenure included activist Constance Baker Motley, future judges Douglas Ginsburg and Ralph Winter, and Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. By the time he retired, Justice Marshall was known as “the Great Dissenter” as one of the last remaining liberal justices on the court among a conservative majority.
Constance Baker Motley was a leading civil rights activist, attorney, and politician well known as a prominent strategist in the battle for civil rights.
After graduating from Columbia Law School, Motley joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as their first female attorney. Motley was the first Black woman to argue before the Supreme Court, and she won nine of the ten landmark cases she argued there.
Among her other notable achievements, Motley wrote the original complaint in Brown v. Board of Education, and defended Martin Luther King Jr.’s right to march in Albany, GA. As a federal judge, Motley presided over Blank v. Sullivan & Cromwell, a milestone case for female attorneys in which the plaintiffs accused prominent law firms of discrimination on the basis of sex.
In 1964, Motley was elected New York state senator for the 21st district, making her the first Black woman to serve in the New York State Senate. There, Motley devoted time to housing equality and urban renewal projects.
In 1966, Motley was appointed to a seat on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, becoming the first Black female federal judge in the country, where she served until her death in 2005.
There is no denying that Black attorneys have contributed an overwhelming amount towards furthering inclusion and equality in the legal profession, but there is still a long way to go. Statistics show that as of 2020, only 5% of attorneys in the United States are Black – a woeful underrepresentation considering that Black men and women make up about 13% of the U.S. population. Unfortunately, despite efforts to the contrary, racial bias, both implicit and explicit, is still prominent in law firm culture, and attorneys of color are often less likely to be recognized for their accomplishments. Difficulty finding mentors and unequal access to higher education also contribute to dismal representation within the field.