10
Law

DeWitt S. Dykes Jr.

• The Legal Status of African Americans: 1787–1883

• African Americans and the Criminal Justice System

• African Americans in the Federal Courts

• African Americans on the U.S. Supreme Court

• Major Federal Legislation

• Major U.S. Supreme Court Decisions

• Attorneys, Judges, and Legal Scholars

• African American Federal Judges by Year of Appointment

THE LEGAL STATUS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS: 1787–1883

The attitude toward the legal treatment of African Americans before 1883 was one of ambivalence. An understanding of the treatment of African Americans during the period must begin in 1787 with the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court’s treatment of African Americans during this period must be viewed in the context of the history and of the events that gave shape to it.

The United States began in 1776 with a declaration of universal equality. But that promise did not include people of color. The ringing testimony to equality in the Declaration of Independence had its limits. In short, America began with a contradiction that centered on race. The constitutional debates of the 1780s highlighted the nation’s contradictory, confusing positions on race questions. The country was founded on the principle of individual liberty, but that liberty did not extend to the African slaves and their progeny. The leading questions of the era were: Should the slaves be counted for purposes of representation? Should Congress be empowered to prohibit slavery and the slave trade? Should an escaped slave be “free” to live among the rest of society?

From its beginning, the United States was mired in a debate over the question of slavery. Southerners wanted slaves counted towards representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, while still insisting that slaves were property. This contradiction led to a compromise in which slaves counted as three-fifths of a person for representational purposes. However, this compromise indicated that the slavery issue would would not easily recede.

Even though the institution of human slavery vexed members of the Constitutional Convention, not once was the word itself used in the document submitted for ratification. The contradiction between the equality espoused by the Constitution and the reality of slavery that the Constitution tolerated would tear the country apart less than 100 years later.

The original Constitution also forbade the new federal government from abolishing the slave trade or otherwise affecting matters of race before the year 1808. Runaway slaves were referred to as “person[s] held to service or labour in one state ... escaping into another ....” This fugitive-slave clause (Article 4, section 2) sought to ensure that the slaveowners’ escaped “property,” would be returned when found. The purpose of these provisions was to ensure the political superiority of white Americans over the African slaves and their progeny. At the time of the Constitution’s framing, African slaves and their descendants were politically inferior to white people.

Even though the framers of the Constitution recognized the peculiar dilemma of racial discrimination, they decided that they could postpone a decision on the “race question.” The idea that matters of racial justice and racial equality could be put off was established. With conflicting constitutional antecedents, the Supreme Court has been enormously conflicted on racial matters. The Court takes its cases as it finds them, and cases on race have never been easily or calmly settled.

THE EARLY DAYS: PRIGG V. PENNSYLVANIA

Before the 1800s the Court had very few opportunities to render a decision directly on the question of slavery because it was an accepted institution and feature of American life. The law clearly recognized slaves as property and therefore subject to regulation as other real property might be. This regulation was often justified by citing the fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution. One of the few pre-Civil War cases to address the slavery question and state regulatory powers was Prigg v. Pennsylvania (41 US [16 Peters] 539, 1842).

Pennsylvania had enacted a statute prohibiting any person from removing blacks from the state by force or violence with the intention of detaining them as slaves. The Court explained that the fugitive-slave clause “contemplates the existence of a positive, unqualified right on the part of the owner of the slave, which no state law or regulation can in any way qualify, regulate, control, or restrain.” The statute was declared invalid with respect to an escaped slave because, in the words of the Court, “any state law which interrupts, limits, delays, or postpones the right of the owner to the immediate possession of the slave, and the immediate command of his service and labor, operates pro tanto, a discharge of the slave there-from.” The Court further held that the clause implicitly vested Congress with the power to assist owners in securing the return of escaped slaves, that Congress had exercised that power by enacting the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, that this national power was exclusive, and that any state laws regulating the means by which slaves were to be delivered up were unconstitutional.

Prigg announced no landmark policy. It simply affirmed the social and political realities of its time. During the period 1790 to 1883, however, two major cases involving African Americans and the issues of race did reach the Supreme Court: Dred Scott v. Sandford (60 US [19 Howard] 393, 1857) and The Civil Rights Cases (109 US 18, 1883)—along with the relatively minor case Strauder v. West Virginia (100 US [10 Otto] 303, 1880). As a whole, they revealed the abiding ambivalence that consistently has characterized American race relations.

DRED SCOTT V. SANDFORD

The 1800s were consumed with sectional strife, primarily strife about race. In 1856 Dred Scott was decided. The case would be an impetus toward civil war. Few cases in American judicial history have achieved as much notoriety as Dred Scott. The case continues to symbolize the marginal status that African Americans have often held in the nation’s social and political order.

Dred Scott was the slave of a U.S. Army surgeon, John Emerson of Missouri. In 1834, Scott traveled with Emerson to live in Illinois, where slavery was prohibited. They later lived in the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was prohibited by the Missouri Compromise. In 1838, Scott returned to Missouri with Emerson. Emerson later died there in 1843, and three years later Scott sued Emerson’s widow for his freedom.

Scott’s claim was based on the argument that his former residence in a free state and a free territory, made him a free man. A Missouri state circuit court ruled in Scott’s favor, but the Missouri Supreme Court later reversed that decision. Meanwhile, Scott had become legally regarded as the property of John F. A. Sandford of New York. Because Sandford did not live in Missouri, Scott’s lawyers were able to transfer the case to a federal court. The lower federal court ruled against Scott, and his lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. By a 7–2 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that Scott could not bring a suit in federal court. The

decision was announced on March 6, 1857, two days after the inauguration of President James Buchanan. The Dred Scott decision declared that no African American, whether free or slave, could claim U.S. citizenship. It also held that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the U.S. territories. In his opinion, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney wrote that African Americans had “no rights which any white man was bound to respect.”

This decision—only the second in the nation’s history in which the Supreme Court declared an act of Congress unconstitutional—was a clear victory for the political interests that supported slavery. Southerners long had argued that neither Congress nor the territorial legislature had the power to exclude slavery from a territory. Only a state could exclude slavery, they maintained.

The ruling also aroused anger and resentment in the North and other parts of the country and launched the nation further along the course to civil war. It influenced the introduction and the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1868, which explicitly overruled Dred Scott, extended citizenship to former slaves, and sought to give them full civil rights.

Each justice in the majority wrote a separate opinion. Chief Justice Taney’s opinion, however, is most often cited because of its far-reaching implications for sectional crisis and for the view of the rights of African Americans that it announced. Speaking for the majority, Chief Justice Taney declared that Scott was not entitled to rights such as the right to vote or to sue in a federal court, because, as an African American, he was not a citizen of the United States. The Court did not dismiss the case after ruling on Scott’s citizenship. Because there was a growing national desire for a ruling on the constitutionality of such laws as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Taney Court seized the opportunity to express its views on both congressional power and the legal status of African Americans.

The Missouri Compromise had forbidden slavery in that part of the Louisiana Territory north of the latitude 36° 30?, except for Missouri. Instead of dismissing the suit, the Court discussed this issue as a part of its decision in Dred Scott. By the same 7–2 margin, it ruled that the Missouri Compromise, which had been repealed in 1854, was unconstitutional. Taney argued that because slaves were property, Congress could not forbid slavery in territories without violating a slaveowner’s right to own property under the Fifth Amendment. As for Scott’s temporary residence in the free state of Illinois, the majority ruled that Scott then had still been subject to Missouri law. Dred Scott was sold shortly afterward, and his new owner gave him his freedom two months after the decision.

The Dred Scott decision energized the newly created Republican Party, which had been formed to curb the expansion of slavery into the Western territories. The decision forced Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, an advocate of popular sovereignty to devise a system that would enable settlers to ban slavery in their jurisdictions. President Buchanan, the South, and a majority of the Supreme Court had hoped that the decision would end the anti-slavery agitation that consumed the country. Instead, the decision increased antislavery sentiment in the North, strengthened the Republican Party, and fed the sectional antagonisms that finally exploded into war in 1861.

STRAUDER V. WEST VIRGINIA AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS CASES

Between the time of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Cases, the only case to protect the rights of African Americans was Strauder v. West Virginia (1880). West Virginia permitted only “white male persons who are 21 years of age” to serve on juries in the state. This, of course, meant that it was impossible for African Americans to serve on a jury. The Supreme Court invalidated this provision as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

The Civil War, caused in part by Justice Taney’s decision in Dred Scott that Congress could not bar slavery in the territories, actually resulted in the destruction of slavery. Moreover, the war created a completely new balance of power between the national and the state governments. Federalism, unlike it had been understood prior to the Civil War, now would function with a totally new calculus in which the federal government was the dominant power.

The years following the Civil War produced the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Their purposes were to emancipate and empower the former slaves. These three amendments are compelling evidence of the relationship between the federal and state governments. The text of the Fourteenth Amendment, overturning Dred Scott, emphasized the significance of this new relationship and the new power realignments.

U.S. citizenship was redefined as being protected by the national constitution, not as a byproduct of state citizenship. State citizenship was subordinate to national citizenship. Augmented by Congress’s enforcement powers, these amendments were the constitutional foundations that supported Reconstruction. A principal legislative result of this period was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875. According to the statute, its purpose was “to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights.” Even though couched in general terms, the statute was designed to aid recently emancipated slaves.

The 1870s became unique years for testing race relations in the United States. During this period there were no state laws requiring the separation of the races in places of public accommodation. Practices in particular establishments or particular jurisdictions were matters of local custom, individual choice, or personal preference. An earlier statute, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 had spawned cases throughout the country including suits for denying sleeper accommodations to African Americans on a Washington-to-New York train, for refusing to sell theater tickets to African Americans in Boston, for restricting African Americans to front platforms in Baltimore streetcars, and for barring African American women from the waiting rooms and parlor cars of railroads in Virginia, Illinois, and California. There also had been massive resistance on the part of whites to the social integration of the races.

Faced with these challenges, the Republican-controlled Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It invalidated all racially motivated interference with individuals’ use of “the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances and theatres” (109 US 9–10). In short, the statute sought to provide legislative specificity to the constitutional norms embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Civil Rights Cases decision resulted from the consolidation of several cases, including United States v. Singleton, United States v. Nichols, United States v. Ryan, United States v. Hamilton, and Robinson v. Memphis & Charleston Railroad. Five of the cases were criminal prosecutions that directly challenged the constitutionality of the 1875 statute. United States v. Singleton, involved the refusal of Samuel Singleton, doorkeeper of New York’s Grand Opera House, to honor the tickets of William R. Davis Jr. and his fiancée.

On November 22, 1879, the pair had attempted to see a matinee performance of Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas. Davis, the business agent of the African American newspaper The Progressive-American, was obviously African American. His fiancée, however, had a light complexion and purchased the tickets earlier. When the couple returned for the performance, they were denied entrance because of Singleton’s race.

Stanley involved the refusal of hotelier, Murray Stanley, to serve a meal to Bird Gee, an African American in his Kansas hotel. Nichols involved the refusal of the Nichols House in Jefferson City, Missouri, to accept an African American as a guest. In Ryan, the doorkeeper at Maguire’s Theater in San Francisco denied an African American man entry to the dress circle at the theater. In Hamilton, the conductor of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railroad denied an African American access to the ladies’ car. Instead, she was relegated to a smoking car.

The sixth case Robinson v. Memphis & Charleston Railroad was not a criminal case. It involved travel on the Memphis & Charleston Railroad by a young African American woman, Mrs. Sallie Robinson, and her nephew, Joseph C. Robinson. Mr. Robinson was described as a young African American “of light complexion, light hair, and light blue eyes.” The train’s conductor attempted forcibly to refuse the two passengers entry to the first-class parlor car for which they had purchased tickets. The conductor mistook the pair for a white man and his paramour. The railroad conceded the constitutionality of the 1875 statute, but argued that it did not apply to the conductor’s actions. The trial judge ruled that motive was dispositive under the act. Thus, if the conductor believed Mrs. Robinson to be a prostitute, whether reasonable or not in that assumption, the exclusion was not based on race and the railroad was not liable. The jury found for the railroad and the Robinsons appealed.

The United States, represented before the Supreme Court by Solicitor General Samuel F. Phillips, argued that the act should be upheld in every case. In addition, the government’s brief discussed the history of American race relations and the genesis of the Civil War amendments and their statutory descendants. The government stressed particularly the importance of equal access to public accommodations. The solicitor general emphasized that this act was one of several enacted by “a Congress led by men who had fought in the Civil War and had framed the war amendments.” Implicit in the solicitor general’s position was the idea that Congress understood, as clearly as anyone could, that it was not sufficient to outlaw slavery and to declare equal protection to be the law of the land. Specific statutory protection was necessary to ensure that every vestige of slavery and every reminder of its stigma were eliminated from public life.

The government’s arguments, however, did not persuade the Court. It announced its decision on October 15, 1883. The Court ruled 8–1 against the United States. Justice Bradley wrote the opinion of the Court, which asserted two conclusions: the Fourteenth Amendment is prohibitory upon the states only, and the Thirteenth Amendment relates only to slavery and involuntary servitude.

Bradley maintained that the Fourteenth Amendment operated only as a prohibition and restriction against the states. Because the Civil Rights Act of 1875 sought to outlaw acts of private individuals, shopkeepers, and other businesses, it violated the constitution. This “state action” doctrine holds that because the government was not the actor in these cases, the Fourteenth Amendment did not empower Congress to outlaw these practices. Also, Bradley’s opinion held that, while Congress was empowered by the Thirteenth Amendment to eliminate slavery and all its vestiges, the denial of access to accommodations in commercial establishments, public conveyances, and public amusements was not a “badge or incident of slavery.” The opinion halted the progress of civil rights and limited the ability of the federal government, acting through Congress, to eliminate and eradicate racial discrimination for almost 90 years.

Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented. At the time, Harlan was the Court’s only Southerner and a former slaveholder. Although he had been a bitter critic of the Civil War Amendments during the 1860s, he had undergone a transformation. His dissent was not announced on the day of the majority’s decision and may not have been written until November. In it, he said that the grounds for the majority’s assertions were “too narrow and artificial” and that the majority refused to embrace both “the substance and the spirit” of the Civil Rights Act. “It is not the words of the law but the internal sense of it that makes the law. The letter of the law is the body; the sense and reason of the law is the soul.” And, in Justice Harlan’s view, the purpose of the act “was to prevent race [emphasis in original] discrimination.” The majority, as Harlan developed the dissent, betrayed this purpose “by a subtle and ingenious verbal criticism.”

Neither the majority of the Supreme Court nor the nation it represented cared to do much else to promote the civil rights of its new African American citizens. Harlan’s dissent in the Civil Rights Cases forecasted his more famous one in Plessy v. Ferguson, as the decision in the Civil Rights Cases led to the black codes, Jim Crow laws, and other examples of de jure (by law) segregation that came to define American race relations.

The Civil Rights Cases revealed the nation’s ambivalence on the questions of race. On one hand, Congress had sought to guarantee the rights of the recently freed slaves by proposing constitutional amendments that were ultimately ratified. Congress went further and augmented the constitutional guarantees with additional legislative protections and safeguards. The Supreme Court, however, frustrated these constitutional and legislative initiatives with a constricted reading of the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth Amendments.

AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Criminal justice in the United States consists of three major components, law enforcement, judicial and legal

services, and corrections. Since the 1970s, African Americans have assumed significant leadership roles in both law enforcement and correctional services as evidenced by the rising number of African American judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys. However, since 1970, the employment of African Americans as judges and prosecutors has not increased at the rate that gives African Americans working in the system a formidable presence.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

As the largest arm of the criminal justice system, police are the most visible criminal justice servants. As the first point of contact for persons entering the system, officers make discretionary, often quasi-judicial decisions as to whether an arrest should be made when an offense is alleged to have occurred. Law enforcers have been organized and empowered to support the interest of those with means to shape law, a factor that had significant bearing on the prior relationship African Americans had with the police.

Just as any other community, African Americans look to law enforcement for protection from an criminal elements present in their midst. However, until the recent integration of many urban police departments, law enforcement officers were used as agents of segregation and fear in many areas. This legacy still causes problems in African American relations with the police.

JUDICIAL AND LEGAL SERVICES AND THE CORRECTIONAL SYSTEM

In the 1990s, a serious debate on the merits of sentencing and capital punishment arose. Statistics showed that African Americans are likely to receive stiffer penalties for killing whites than whites receive for killing African Americans. This is also true in the administration of the death penalty, which disproportionately is used against African Americans who kill whites. In 1987, the Supreme Court took up the issue in McKleskey v. Kemp, and ruled that statistics could not be used to prove the death penalty was being administered in a discriminatory manner. The Court required more evidence and evinced a fear that if they had ruled the other way, that all African Americans on death row would come forward with claims. The issue did not die, however, as in 1999, Illinois announced a moratorium on executions to study the issue.

“THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY”

On June 12, 1994, a brutal, double-murder led to one of the most sensational criminal trials of the twentieth century. Nicole Brown Simpson, former wife of African American football legend O. J. Simpson, was brutally slain outside her house along with her friend Ron Goldman. Almost immediately, evidence pointed to O. J. Simpson as the primary suspect. The subsequent, year-long trial was aired on television, allowing viewers to witness the entire spectacle almost as if it were a soap opera.

Prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, an African American, portrayed Simpson as a jealous husband who had been locked in a pattern of domestic abuse. The murder of a spouse by a habitual abuser is common, they argued, and the prosecutors used this as the motive. Simpson’s “Dream Team” of defense attorneys focused on an alleged police conspiracy based on race. Simpson was found not guilty in October 1995. Ultimately, the case had little to do with the actual murders. Broadcasting & Cable magazine reported that “the verdict . . . broke all previous TV viewing records, with over 150 million people tuning in.”

Rather than addressing the crime, the proceedings brought the ugly underbelly of the country’s prejudices, fears, and values to light. Polls showed that most whites thought Simpson was guilty, while blacks were divided on the verdict. Many African Americans viewed Simpson as another African American man caught in a judicial system enforced by the bigoted Los Angeles Police Department. The trial was the first in which overwhelming DNA evidence was not persuasive to a jury, as the defense attorneys alleged it had been rendered useless by police errors. The impression that Simpson had purchased his freedom with his high-priced lawyers grew in the years following the trial. Following the verdict, the Brown and Goldman families won a wrongful death civil suit against Simpson, forcing him to sell most of his assets. Simpson became a recluse, innocent in the eyes of the court, but guilty in the eyes of many.

THE CASE OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL

Though not as big a newsmaker as the O.J. Simpson spectacle, the case of outspoken journalist and former

Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal caused quite a ripple in the legal system during the mid-1990s. During an altercation between a Philadelphia police officer and Jamal’s brother, Jamal claims to have interceded in order to keep his brother from being beaten. Though details are sketchy and contested, the aftermath of the fray left Jamal wounded by a bullet from the officer’s gun and the officer dead. Arrested and convicted of murder, Jamal was sentenced to death in 1982.

Groups of national and international supporters advocated for Jamal’s release, alleging that aspects of Jamal’s case were improperly handled in regards to the U.S. Constitution and correct legal procedure. Many believe Jamal was framed by the Philadelphia police who wanted to keep the blunt and forthright reporter from exposing evidence of corruption within the law enforcement agency.

In December 2001, U.S. District Judge William Yohn invalidated the death sentence. Citing several problems, including the jury instructions, Judge Yohn denied Abu-Jamal’s request for a new trial but indicated that he was entitled to a new sentencing hearing.

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE FEDERAL COURTS

Less than 4 percent of all judges are African American. Nonetheless, the amazing fact is that despite a complete lack of legal rights as slaves, African Americans made their first in-roads toward civil rights via the court system. In separate incidents, escaped slave Elizabeth Freeman, New England slave Lucy Prince, and Southern slave Dred Scott, all battled racial barriers with courage and dignity.

African Americans did not enter the courts just as parties to actions, they also participated in the system in professional capacities. In 1844, Macon Allen became the first African American admitted to a state bar. Charlotte Ray later became the first African American woman to gain the same distinction. Other pioneering women followed, including Ellen Craft, Francis Watkins Harper, Laetitia Rowley, Maria Stewart, Mary Church Terrell, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. John S. Rock became the first African American lawyer to argue a case before the Supreme Court in 1865. In 1873, Mifflin Gibbs became the first African American municipal judge. Though he only served a single term, his reputation for fairness was legendary, and he was named U.S. consul to Madagascar in 1897. Jonathan Jasper Wright was elected to the South Carolina State Supreme Court in 1870. In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed William H. Hastie to the Territorial Court of the Virgin Islands, making him the first African American federal district court judge. In 1939, Hastie was succeeded by Herman E. Moore, another African American. Jane Matilda Bolin became the first African American female judge when she was appointed Judge of Domestic Relations for the City of New York. In 1945, President Harry Truman appointed Irvin C. Mollison to the U.S. Customs Court (now the U.S. Court of International Trade), thus making him the first African American lifetime appointee to a federal court.

Nominated by the U.S. president and confirmed through Senate hearings, federal judgeships are lifetime appointments. Of the roughly 1,000 active federal judges—including U.S. district courts, U.S. circuit courts, U.S. courts of appeals, and the Supreme Court—by 2002 about 80 were African American. Still, African Americans have received appointments since the early 1960s, beginning with James B. Parsons, who was nominated by President John F. Kennedy to sit on the bench of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 1961. At that time, the lack of federal African American judges was noticeable. Kennedy appointed Wade Hampton McCree Jr. to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in 1961, and Thurgood Marshall to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1962. In five years, Marshall would go on to become the first African American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

President Lyndon B. Johnson followed Kennedy’s lead, nominating 11 African Americans to federal benches. Among them were A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.—Johnson’s first appointee—and Constance Baker Motley. As a member of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Motley became the first African American woman to hold a federal judgeship in 1966. The next female appointee did not come for 12 years, when Mary Johnson Lowe was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the same district court. Carter also chose Amalya Lyle Kearse, in 1979, to become the first African American woman on the U.S. Court of Appeals. She was seated in the same venue in which Thurgood Marshall began his judicial career. Overall, Carter appointed 37 African Americans in four years.

Republican presidents have had the poorest record of nominating African Americans to the federal courts. Richard Nixon only nominated six, and Gerald Ford three, over the combined eight years of their presidential terms. Lyndon Johnson nominated more in half the time. Ronald Reagan only appointed seven African Americans to federal

courts in eight years. His successor, President George H. W. Bush, appointed 13 in four years, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In contrast, Democrat Bill Clinton appointed 63 African Americans to federal courts by August 2000. He tried to appoint more, but the Republican-controlled Senate would not hold hearings or approve many of his judicial nominations, creating numerous vacancies. However, Clinton did help integrate the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. After the Senate refused to consider four nominations he made to this court, Clinton nominated an African American lawyer, Roger Gregory, as a “recess appointment” in December 2000. Since the Senate had ended its business for the year, Gregory served through most of 2001 without Senate approval. The maneuver pressured the administration of President George W. Bush to renominate Gregory in May 2001. When Democrats took control of the Senate that spring, the Senate approved Gregory, who became the first African American lifetime federal judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

AFRICAN AMERICANS ON THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

Thurgood Marshall, a graduate of Lincoln University and Howard University Law School, was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1933. He later joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as assistant to special counsel Charles Hamilton Houston. In 1938 Marshall succeeded Houston as special counsel, and in 1950, he became director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). While working for the NAACP and the LDF, Marshall played a major role in some of the Supreme Court’s most important cases, including Smith v. Allwright (1944), Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1946), Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), Sweatt v. Painter (1950), and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Between 1938 and 1961, Marshall argued 32 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, winning 29.

In 1961, Marshall became the second African American to serve on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, when President John F. Kennedy named Marshall to fill a vacancy. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the post of U.S. solicitor general. With the retirement of Associate Justice Tom Campbell Clark in 1967, Marshall was nominated to fill the vacancy on the high court. Marshall’s nomination was met with objections from Southern senators. Nevertheless, he was confirmed, becoming the first African American justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. While on the Court, Marshall served as a supporter of affirmative action, free speech, and the rights of workers. He wrote few famous decisions, but his dissenting opinions in such cases as Milliken v. Bradley (1974), and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), are famous.

On June 27, 1991, Justice Marshall announced his plan to retire after 24 years on the U.S. Supreme Court. On July 1, President George H. W. Bush announced that he had chosen Clarence Thomas, a conservative African American appellate court judge, to fill the vacancy created by Marshall. Previously, in 1981, President Ronald Reagan had appointed Clarence Thomas, a graduate of a Holy Cross College and Yale University Law School, to head the civil rights division of the Department of Education. A year later, Thomas was appointed to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1990 Thomas was appointed by President H. W. Bush to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

In a flurry of controversy, Clarence Thomas was appointed an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991, after being nominated by President George H. W. Bush. Besides Thomas’s relative youth and judicial inexperience, his nomination hearings were marred by the accusations from Anita Hill that she had suffered from sexual harassment while under his employ at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

The nation, as well as the Senate, seemed divided by Hill’s shocking testimony. Thomas denied the allegations and had many of his former co-workers testify for him. After the confirmation votes were counted, Thomas was nominated by the narrow margin of 52–48.

MAJOR FEDERAL LEGISLATION

EMANCIPATION ACT (APRIL 1862)

(ch.54, 12 state. 376) This law, enacted April 16, 1862, abolished slavery in the District of Columbia.

EMANCIPATION ACT (JUNE 1862)

(ch. 111, 12 Stat. 432) This act, abolishing slavery in all other territories of the United States, was enacted June 19, 1862.

AMENDMENT THIRTEEN TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION (1865)

This Amendment, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude in all of the United States, was ratified December 16, 1865.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT (1866)

(ch. 31, 14 Stat. 27) This act was enacted April 9, 1866, to provide all citizens, especially recently freed slaves, with basic civil rights, including the right to make and enforce contracts, to bring suits in court, to purchase and sell real and personal property, and to enjoy security of person and property.

AMENDMENT FOURTEEN TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION (1868)

This Amendment defined U.S. and state citizenship, and provided all citizens with the privileges and immunities of citizenship; the right to life, liberty, and property; and equal protection under the law. It was ratified July 20, 1868.

AMENDMENT FIFTEEN TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION (1870)

This Amendment prohibited using race, color, or previous condition of servitude to deny anyone the right to vote. It was ratified March 30, 1870.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT (1870)

(ch. 114, 16 Stat. 140) This statute was enacted May 31, 1870, to carry out the provisions of the Fifteenth Amendment. It established penalties for violations of the provisions of the Amendment.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT (1871)

(ch. 99, 16 Stat. 433) This law was enacted February 28, 1871, to further define the protections established in the Fifteenth Amendment.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT (APRIL 1871)

(ch. 22, 17 Stat. 13) This law was enacted April 20, 1871, to further outline the protections provided for by the Fourteenth Amendment. It provided for the vindication of crimes committed under the act in federal court.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT (1875)

(ch. 114, 18 Stat. 335) This act was designed to provide all citizens with equal access to public places. Ruling in 1883 in a set of cases known as the Civil Rights Cases, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the act.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1957

(Pub.L. No. 85–315, 71 Stat. 634) This act created the Commission on Civil Rights and empowered it to investigate allegations of deprivation of a U.S. citizen’s right to vote, to appraise laws and policies of the federal government with respect to equal protection of the law, and to submit a report to the president and to Congress within two years.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1960

(Pub.L. No. 86–449, 74 Stat. 86) This law guaranteed the provision of criminal penalties in the event a suspect crosses state lines to avoid legal process for the actual or attempted bombing or burning of any vehicle or building, and provided penalties for persons who obstructed or interfered with any order of a federal court.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964

(Pub.L. No. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241) This act prohibited discrimination in the use of public accommodations whose operations involve interstate commerce and provided enforcement measures to ensure equal access to public facilities. It also prohibited racial discrimination in any program receiving federal aid and discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in most areas of employment. It authorized the U.S. attorney general to use lawsuits to desegregate schools and public facilities.

AMENDMENT TWENTY-FOUR TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION (1964)

This Amendment prohibited the use of a poll tax or any other tax—a common method to keep poorer people, especially African Americans, from voting—as a requirement for voting. It was ratified January 23, 1964.

VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965

(Pub.L. No. 89–110, 79 Stat. 437) The Voting Rights Act of 1965 struck down requirements such as literacy and knowledge tests and poll tax payments which had been used to restrict African American participation in voting, and provided for federal registrars to register voters should state registrars refuse to do so. It further stipulated that registered voters cannot be prohibited from voting.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1968

(Pub.L. No. 90–284, 82 Stat. 73) This act provided for open housing by prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin.

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY ACT OF 1972

(Pub.L. No. 92–261, 86 Stat. 103) This act provided the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964) with the authority to issue judicially enforceable cease and desist orders in cases involving discriminatory employment practices.

PUBLIC WORKS EMPLOYMENT ACT OF 1977

(Pub.L. No. 95–28, 91 Stat. 116, Title I) The statute provided that 10 percent of funds expended as a result of federal grants be earmarked for minority business enterprises.

VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 AMENDMENT

(Pub.L. No. 97–205, 96 Stat. 131 (1982)) This Amendment was a congressional response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in City of Mobile, Alabama v. Wiley L. Bolden that required proof of discriminatory intent in voting rights cases. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibited any voting practice or procedure “imposed or applied by any state or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”

CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION ACT OF 1983

(Pub.L. No. 98–183, 87 Stat. 1301) This act created an eight-member bipartisan commission with four members appointed by the president, and two by the Senate and House respectively. The commissioners are appointed to four- or six-year terms and can be fired only for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office. The statute was enacted after President Ronald Reagan attempted to fire commissioners who did not express his views on civil rights. The act extended the life of the Civil Rights Commission Authorization Act of 1978, which had been scheduled to expire in 1983.

CIVIL RIGHTS RESTORATION ACT OF 1988

(Pub.L. No. 100–259, 102 Stat. 31) The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1984 in Grove City College v. Bell that not all programs and activities of an institution were covered by Title IX of the Education amendments of 1972 (Public Law 89–10, 79 Stat. 27) and that discrimination can be barred only in programs that directly receive federal funds. The act amended portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and refined the definition of programs and activities that were covered by the Civil Rights Act and other legislation. Specifically the amendment addressed Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination in educational programs receiving federal financial assistance.

FAIR HOUSING AMENDMENTS ACT OF 1988

(Pub.L. No. 100–430, 102 Stat 1619) The Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 strengthened laws that resulted from passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The act of 1988 gave the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) the authority to issue discrimination charges, allowed administrative law justices the ability to review housing discrimination cases, and removed the $1,000 limit on punitive damages that a victim of discrimination may receive.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1991

(Pub.L. 102–166, 105 Stat. 1071) This act was designed to provide additional remedies to deter harassment and intentional discrimination in the workplace, to provide guidelines for the adjudication of cases arising under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and to expand the scope of civil rights legislation weakened by Supreme Court decisions, particularly the Court’s ruling in Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 US 642 (1989).

GLASS CEILING ACT OF 1991

(Pub.L. 102–166, 105 Stat. 1081) This law was designed to establish a means for studying and addressing the underrepresentation of women and minorities at management and decision making levels in the workforce.

MAJOR U.S. SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

ACCESS TO THE POLLS

UNITED STATES V. REESE

[92 U.S. 214 (1876)] Prior to the Fifteenth Amendment, states regulated all details of state and local elections—they prescribed the qualifications of voters and the manner in which those desiring to vote at an election should make their qualifications known to the election officers. Thus, the Fifteenth Amendment changed the past practice and provided rules not prescribed by state law. However, the Court restricted the scope of the Fifteenth Amendment and the ability of Congress to enforce it by not punishing election officials who unlawfully interfered with, and prevented the free exercise of, the elective franchise.

The federal government indicted two Kentucky election inspectors for refusing to receive and count the vote of an African American citizen. The Supreme Court held that Congress had not yet provided “appropriate legislation”’ for the punishment of the offense charged under any sections of the Fifteenth Amendment.

GUINN V. UNITED STATES

[238 U.S. 347 (1915)] In 1910, an amendment to the constitution of Oklahoma restricted voting rights by providing that no illiterate person could be registered. A “grandfather clause,” however, granted an exemption for persons who resided in a foreign country prior to January 1, 1866, and had been eligible to register prior to that date, or had a lineal ancestor who was eligible to vote at that time. Since no African Americans were eligible to vote in Oklahoma prior to 1866, the law disenfranchised all African Americans.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the grandfather clause was invalid in Oklahoma or in any other state.

NIXON V. HERNDON

[273 U.S. 536 (1927)] Dr. L. A. Nixon, an African American, was refused the right to vote in a primary election because of a state statute that prohibited African Americans from participating in Democratic Party primaries in Texas. Nixon filed suit against the election officials and his case ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “It is too clear for extended argument that color cannot be made the basis of a statutory classification affecting the right set up in this case.” As a result, the Texas statute was declared unconstitutional.

NIXON V. CONDON

[286 U.S. 73 (1932)] As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Nixon v. Herndon, the Texas legislature passed a new statute. This statute empowered the state Democratic executive committee to set up its own rules regarding primary elections. The party promptly adopted a resolution stipulating that only white Democrats be allowed to participate in primaries. Dr. Nixon again filed suit, and his right to vote was again upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

LANE V. WILSON

[307 U.S. 268 (1939)] In an attempt to restrict voter registration, the Oklahoma legislature stated that all Oklahomans who were already registered would remain qualified voters and that all others would have to register within 12 days (from April 30 to May 11, 1916) or be forever barred from the polls. In 1934, I. W. Lane, an African American, was refused registration on the basis of this statute. The U.S. Supreme Court declared that the statute was in conflict with the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and was unconstitutional.

SMITH V. ALLWRIGHT

[321 U.S. 649 (1944)] The Texas State Democratic Party, during its convention in 1932, limited the right of membership to white electors. As a result, nonwhites were unable to participate in a Democratic Party primary. In Grovey v. Townsend (295 US 45), the Supreme Court had upheld this limitation because it was made by the party in convention, not by a party executive committee. In Smithv. Allwright, the Court overruled Grovey, stating, “[T]he United States is a constitutional democracy. Its organic law grants to all citizens a right to participate in the choice of elected officials without restriction by any state because of race.” The Court noted that a political party makes its selection of candidates as an agency of the state. Therefore, it cannot exclude participation based on race and remain consistent with the Fifteenth Amendment.

GOMILLION V. LIGHTFOOT

[364 U.S. 339 (1960)] African American citizens challenged an Alabama statute that redefined the boundaries of the city of Tuskegee. The statute altered the shape of Tuskegee and placed all but four of Tuskegee’s 400 African American voters outside of the city limits, while not displacing a single white voter. The Court struck down the statute as a violation of the Fifteenth Amendment.

BAKER V. CARR

[369 U.S. 186 (1962)] Baker v. Carr was brought to the Supreme Court by electors in several counties of Tennessee. The electors asserted that the 1901 legislative reap-portionment statute was unconstitutional because the numbers of voters in the various districts had changed substantially since 1901. The plaintiffs requested that the Supreme Court either direct a reapportionment by mathematical application of the same formula to the 1960 Census, or instruct the state to hold direct at-large elections. The state district court had dismissed the case on the grounds that it was a political question and did not fall within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the case involved a basic constitutional right rather than a political question and thereby was in the jurisdiction of the U.S. district court and federal courts in general. In later cases, such as Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963), and Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), the U.S. Supreme Court explained the standards to be applied to voting districts in each state give reasonably equal representation, resulting in a principle popularly referred to as “one man, one vote.”

SOUTH CAROLINA V. KATZENBACH

[383 U.S. 301 (1966)] The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to eliminate racial discrimination in voting, which had influenced the electoral process for nearly a century. The act abolished literacy tests, waived accumulated poll taxes, and allotted the U.S. attorney general vast discretionary powers over regions suspected of discriminatory legislation and practices against African American voters.

South Carolina’s petition asserted that the Voting Rights Act encroached on state sovereignty, thus violating the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court dismissed the petition because section 1 of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution says, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

ALLEN V. STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS

[393 U.S. 110 (1969)] The Supreme Court emphasized that subtle as well as obvious state regulations, “which have the effect of denying citizens their right to vote because of their race,” are prohibited. The Court confirmed that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act covered a variety of practices other than voter registration.

GEORGIA V. UNITED STATES

[411 U.S. 526 (1973)] This case confirmed the propriety of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which forbids states with a history of racial discrimination (e.g., Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia) from implementing any change in voting practices and procedures without first submitting the proposed plan to the U.S. attorney general for approval.

WHITE V. REGESTER

[412 U.S. 755 (1973)] The Supreme Court struck down a Texas multimember districting scheme that was used to prevent African Americans from being elected to public office. The Court upheld a finding that even though there was no evidence that African Americans faced official obstacles to registration, voting, or running for office, they had been excluded from effective participation in the political process in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

CITY OF MOBILE, ALABAMA V. WILEY L. BOLDEN

[446 U.S. 55 (1980)] A class action suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama on behalf of African American citizens in Mobile. The suit alleged that the city’s practice of electing commissioners at large by a majority vote unfairly diluted the voting strength of African Americans in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Fifteenth Amendment. The district court ruled that the constitutional rights of Mobile’s African American citizens had been violated and entered a judgment in their favor. The court also ruled that Mobile’s city commissioners be replaced by a municipal government consisting of a mayor and a city council composed of persons selected from single member districts. The lower court decision was upheld.

THORNBURG V. GINGLES

[478 U.S. 30 (1986)] Thornburg v. Gingles was the Supreme Court’s first decision interpreting the provisions of the 1982 amendments to section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The amendments prohibited voting schemes that result in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote due to race or color. In this decision, the Court ruled that the redistricting plan adopted by the North Carolina legislature—which unintentionally led to racially polarized voting by whites and diluted African Americans voting strength—was in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act prohibits neutral voting requirements that have a discriminatory effect, as well as those that are intentionally discriminatory.

SHAW V. RENO

[509 U.S. 630 (1993)] The Court ruled that using race as a principle of drawing the boundaries of a voting district solely to increase the number of minority voters is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

MILLER V. JOHNSON

[115 S.Ct. 2475 (1995)] The Court ruled that a congressional district purposely drawn to contain a majority of African American voters is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

HUNT V. CROMARTIE

[532 U.S. 234 (2001)] The Supreme Court ruled that evidence that race was a conscious factor in drawing the boundaries of a Congressional district does not automatically make the results unconstitutional if other permissible political reasons were dominant motivating factors. Evidence as to motivation must be presented in court to make a determination of permissibility.

EDUCATION

MISSOURI EX REL. LLOYD GAINES V. CANADA

[305 U.S. 339 (1938)] Gaines v. Canada was brought before the Supreme Court by Lloyd Lionel Gaines, an African American who had been refused admission to the School of Law of the State University of Missouri. Gaines contended that the University of Missouri’s actions were a violation of his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The University of Missouri defended its action by maintaining that Lincoln University, a predominantly African American institution, would eventually establish its own law school. The Supreme Court of Missouri dismissed Gaines’s petition and upheld the university’s decision to reject his application. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, reversed this decision, maintaining that

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the State of Missouri was obliged to provide equal facilities for African Americans or, in the absence of such facilities, to admit them to the existing facility.

SIPUEL V. BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

[332 U.S. 631 (1948)] Ada Lois Sipuel, an African American, was denied admission to the law school of the University of Oklahoma in 1948. Sipuel and the NAACP filed a petition in Oklahoma requesting an order directing her admission. The petition was denied on the grounds that the Gaines decision did not require a state with segregation laws to admit an African American student to its white schools. In addition, the Oklahoma court maintained that the state itself was not obligated to set up a separate school unless first requested to do so by African Americans desiring a legal education. The court’s decision was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Oklahoma. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, reversed this decision, and held that the state was required to provide African Americans with equal educational opportunities.

SWEATT V. PAINTER

[339 U.S. 629 (1950)] Heman Marion Sweatt was refused admission to the University of Texas Law School on the grounds that substantially equivalent facilities were already available in another Texas State law school open only to African American students. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Sweatt be admitted to the University of Texas Law School. Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson wrote that “in terms of number of the faculty, variety of courses and opportunity for specialization, size of the student body, scope of the library, availability of law review and similar activities, the University of Texas Law School is superior” to those in the state law school for African Americans. Therefore, the refusal to admit Sweatt to the University of Texas Law School was unconstitutional.

MCLAURIN V. OKLAHOMA STATE REGENTS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

[339 U.S. 637 (1950)] After having been admitted to the University of Oklahoma, G. W. McLaurin, an African American, was required by school officials to occupy a special seat in each classroom and a segregated table in both the library and the cafeteria because of his race. The U.S. Supreme Court declared unanimously that African American students must receive the same treatment at the hands of the state as other students and could not be segregated.

GRAY V. UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE

[342 U.S. 517 (1952)] This case resulted from the refusal of a U.S. district court to force the University of Tennessee to admit African American students. The lone judge to whom the matter was then referred ruled that the African American students were entitled to admission, but did not order the university to enforce this ruling. The Supreme Court was asked to refer the case back to the district court for further proceedings. Pending this appeal, however, one of the students seeking admission was enrolled at the University of Tennessee. Since the Court found no suggestion that persons “similarly situated would not be afforded similar treatment,” the case was dismissed as moot.

BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS

[347 U.S. 483 (1954)] This case involved the practice of denying African American children equal access to state public schools due to state laws requiring or permitting racial segregation. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that segregation deprived the children of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned. After reargument a year later, the case was remanded (along with its four companion cases) to the district court, which was instructed to enter necessary orders to ensure the admission of all parties to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis.

HAWKINS V. BOARD OF CONTROL

[347 U.S. 971 (1954)] This case resulted from a ruling of the Florida Supreme Court that denied an African American the right to enter the University of Florida Law School on the grounds that he had failed to show that a separate law school for African Americans was not substantively equal to the University of Florida Law School. The U.S. Supreme Court vacated the judgment and remanded the case to the Florida Supreme Court for a decision in light of the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which overruled the separate but equal doctrine.

After two years, the Florida Supreme Court continued to deny Hawkins the right to enter the University of Florida. Also, it had appointed a commissioner to determine if there was a time in the future that Hawkins could be admitted “without causing public mischief.” However, the Supreme Court ruled that Hawkins should be admitted to the school promptly, since there was no palpable reason for further delay.

TUREAD V. BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

[347 U.S. 971 (1954)] This case was the result of a provisional injunction requiring the admittance of African Americans to Louisiana State University. The state court of appeals reversed this action, declaring that it required the decision of a district court of three judges. The U.S. Supreme Court vacated this judgment and remanded the case for consideration, in light of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

FRAZIER V. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA

[350 U.S. 979 (1956)] The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a district court judgment that African Americans may not be excluded from institutions of higher learning because of their race or color.

COOPER V. AARON

[358 U.S. 1 (1958)] The impact of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas was very slight until the Justice Department began to initiate its own desegregation lawsuits. Arkansas state officials passed state laws contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment holdings in Brown I and Brown II that forbid states to use their governmental powers to bar children on racial grounds from attending schools where there is state participation through any arrangement, management, funds, or property. The cases also ordered the states to immediately cease and desist from desegregation practices immediately.

In Cooper, the U.S. attorney general filed a petition on behalf of the U.S. government to enjoin the governor of Arkansas and officers of the National Guard from preventing the admittance of nine African American children into Central High School in September 1957 in Little Rock. A law was passed relieving school children from compulsory attendance at racially mixed schools. The Supreme Court declared that the Fourteenth Amendment outlined in the Brown case was the supreme law of the land and could not be nullified by state legislators, executive or judicial officers, or evasive schemes for segregation.

LEE V. MACON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION

[389 U.S. 25 (1967)] The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision ordering the desegregation of Alabama’s school districts and declared state school grants to white students attending segregated private schools unconstitutional.

ALEXANDER V. HOLMES COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION

[396 US 19 (1969)] The U.S. Supreme Court ordered all 33 school districts in Mississippi to desegregate. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) had asked that the districts be granted more time to desegregate. This was the first time HEW had sought a delay in integration, but the Court ordered that integration proceed immediately.

NORTH CAROLINA STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION V. SWANN

[402 U.S. 43 (1971)] and

SWANN V. CHARLOTTE MECKLENBURG BOARD OF EDUCATION

[402 U.S. 1 (1971)] In these two cases the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the use of busing and faculty transfers to overcome the effects of dual school systems—segregated school systems resulting from residential patterns. Writing the decision, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger noted that “bus transportation has long been a part of all public educational systems and it is unlikely that a truly effective remedy could be devised without continued reliance upon it.” The Court declared that segregation resulted from past misconduct and affirmed the lower court’s order that the school board transfer students by bus to achieve a racial mix at each school. The ruling, however, left local district judges the authority to decide whether a desegregation plan was constitutionally adequate.

WRIGHT V. CITY OF EMPORIA

[402 U.S. 43 (1971)] and

COTTON V. SCOTLAND NECK BOARD OF EDUCATION

[407 U.S. 485 (1972)] The Supreme Court held that two towns with heavy concentrations of white students could not secede from a largely African American county school system and form its own school district in an attempt to frustrate integration.

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, SCHOOL BOARD V. STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION

[412 U.S. 92 (1973)] In a 4–4 vote, the Supreme Court declined to reinstate an order to integrate the predominantly African American schools in Richmond with those of two white suburbs. Integrationists expressed concern that permitting de facto segregation to stand in this manner would hinder corrective action in other metropolitan areas, perpetuate “neighborhood” one-race schools, and lessen the extent of integration in unitary school systems.

MILLIKEN V. BRADLEY

[418 U.S. 717 (1974)] After failing to reach a decision in Richmond School Board, the full Court reached a decision outlawing inter-district remedies to end segregation in schools. The school system of Detroit had become heavily African American due to white flight to the suburbs. Fearing that Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas would be crippled, the district court ordered busing between the districts of Detroit and its white suburbs.

However, the Court overturned this decision as there was no evidence that the suburbs had contributed to the segregation. Integrationists attacked this decision as the end of Brown.

RUNYON V. MCCRARY

[427 U.S. 160 (1976)] In a unanimous decision, the Court held that the Constitution places no value on discrimination, and that even though private discrimination was not socially desired by the members of the Court, it may be characterized legally as a form of exercising the freedom of association protected by the First Amendment. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibited racial discrimination in the making and enforcing of contracts, however, argued the families of two African American children who were denied admission to private schools in Virginia. The children’s parents sought to enter into a contractual relationship with the private schools on an equal basis to white and nonwhite students.

REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA V. BAKKE

[438 U.S. 265 (1978)] Allan Bakke, a white male who had been denied admission to the University of California Medical School at Davis for two consecutive years, charged that the university’s minority quota system—under which only disadvantaged members of certain minority races were considered for 16 of the 100 places in each year’s class—denied him equal protection.

The trial court declared that the school could not take race into account in making the admissions decision and held that the challenged admissions program violated the federal and state constitutions and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The university appealed. The Supreme Court ruled that Bakke had been illegally discriminated against and that numerical quotas based on race were unconstitutional, but held that “the State has a substantial interest that legitimately may be served by a properly devised admission program involving the competitive consideration of race and ethnic origin.”

BOB JONES UNIVERSITY V. IRS

[461 U.S. 574 (1983)] Contrary to long-standing IRS policy, the Reagan administration sought to extend tax-exempt status to schools that discriminate on the basis of race. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized the inability of the Justice Department to argue the case fairly, and requested that former Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman present the argument. The Supreme Court rebuffed the Justice Department’s arguments and unanimously agreed with Coleman’s position that the IRS could deny tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory schools.

ALLEN V. WRIGHT

[488 U.S. 737 (1984)] Parents of African American children instituted a nationwide lawsuit claiming that the Internal Revenue Service’s failure to deny tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory private schools constituted federal financial aid to racially segregated institutions and diminished the ability of their children to receive an adequate education. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case on the grounds that the plaintiffs did not have “standing” because they failed to show that the injury suffered was “fairly traceable” or caused by the conduct of the IRS. In addition the Court maintained that the remedy was “speculative” since there was no evidence that the withdrawal of tax-exempt status would cause schools to end their racially discriminatory practices.

OKLAHOMA CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION V. DOWELL

[498 U.S. 237 (1991)] The Court ruled that when a school district petitioned to end a desegregation order, the petition could be approved if the district has been in good faith compliance with the order from the beginning and if remnants of past discrimination have been eliminated to the degree possible in the situation.

UNITED STATES V. FORDICE

[505 U.S. 717 (1992)] The Court ruled that when a state higher education system continues to use educational practices that were started to keep the races segregated and that perpetuate segregation, the practices violate the equal protection guarantee if they can be ended without significantly changing the quality of the education offered.

JENKINS V. MISSOURI

[115 S.Ct. 2038 (1995)] The Court ruled that a federal district court erred in ordering increased salaries for school system employees as part of a program to motivate attendance by non-minority students living outside the district in an effort to increase desegregation.

EMPLOYMENT

GRIGGS V. DUKE POWER CO.

[401 U.S. 424 (1971)] African American employees challenged their employer’s requirement of a high school diploma or passing of intelligence tests as a condition of employment. African Americans were employed only in the labor department where the highest paying jobs paid less than the lowest jobs in the other departments. When the company abandoned its policy restricting blacks to labor in 1965, completion of high school and median scores on two aptitude tests were required to transfer from labor to another department.

The Supreme Court found the objective of Congress in Title III was to achieve equality of employment opportunities and remove barriers that have operated in the past. Under the Act, practices, procedures, or tests neutral on their face and even neutral in their intent cannot be maintained if they operate to “freeze” the status quo of prior discrimination. The employment practice must be related to job performance.

It was determined that neither the high school diploma nor the intelligence tests were demonstrably related to successful job performance. Good intent or absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem employment procedures and practices. The employment policies had a discriminatory effect toward African American employees and were struck down.

ALBEMARLE PAPER CO. V. MOODY

[422 U.S. 405 (1975)] African American employees of a paper mill in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, successfully challenged the company’s use of written tests that allegedly measured numerical and verbal intelligence. Based upon the standards enunciated in Griggs v. Duke Power Co., the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the tests were discriminatory because they were not jobrelated and did not predict success on the job. The Court held that the plaintiffs were entitled to “complete justice” and necessary relief that would “make them whole.” The Court awarded the African American employees back pay and made it clear that back pay should rarely be denied once there has been a showing of discrimination. The Court also stated that back pay cannot be denied simply because the employer acted in good faith or did not intend to discriminate.

HAZELWOOD SCHOOL DISTRICT V. UNITED STATES

[433 U.S. 299 (1977)] Several African American teachers seeking jobs in suburban St. Louis, Missouri, offered statistical data indicating they had been denied employment opportunities. The plaintiffs attempted to prove their case by showing that the percentage of African American students was greater than the percentage of African American teachers in the school district.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that “statistics can be an important source of proof in employment discrimination cases,” it rejected the plaintiffs’ statistical evidence and called it irrelevant. The Court concluded that relevant statistical data would be the percentage of qualified African American teachers in the relevant geographical area compared with the percentage of African Americans in Hazelwood’s teaching staff.

TEAMSTERS V. UNITED STATES

[431 U.S. 324 (1977)] In enforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Supreme Court held that victims of past union discrimination were entitled to retroactive seniority benefits. The Supreme Court required proof of “intent to discriminate,” however, in order to establish that a given seniority system is illegal. Subsequent cases in lower federal courts during the late 1970s entitled discrimination victims to retroactive back pay in addition to retroactive seniority benefits.

LOUIS SWINT AND WILLIE JOHNSON V. PULLMAN STANDARD AND THE UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA

[72 L.Ed. 66 (1982)] African American employees of Pullman Standard brought a lawsuit against Pullman Standard and the United Steelworkers of America. The lawsuit alleged that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was violated by a seniority system. In its decision, the district court ruled “that the difference in terms, conditions or privileges of employment resulting from the seniority system are not the result of an intention to discriminate because of race or color” and held that the system satisfied the requirements of section 703(h) of the Civil Rights Act. This decision was later reversed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which stated, “[B]ecause we find the differences in the terms, conditions and standards of employment for black workers and white workers at Pullman Standard resulted from an intent to discriminate because of race, we hold that the system is not legally valid under Section 703(h) of Title VII U.S.C. 2000e-2(h).”

WATSON V. FORT WORTH BANK AND TRUST

[108 U.S. 2777 (1987)] Clara Watson, an African American woman, alleged that she was repeatedly denied promotion to supervisory positions which were awarded to white employees with equivalent or lesser experience. The bank contended that its promotion decisions were based on various subjective criteria including experience, previous supervisory experience, and the ability to get along with others.

The U.S. Supreme Court held that Watson did not have to prove intentional discrimination. The Court concluded that subjective, facially neutral selection devices that disadvantage African Americans in much the same way as objective criteria (e.g., written tests) are unlawful.

PATTERSON V. MCLEAN CREDIT UNION

[491 U.S. 164 (1989)] An African American female was employed as a teller and file coordinator for ten years until she was laid-off. She alleged that she had been harassed, denied promotion to accounting clerk, and later discharged because of her race. She filed suit asserting violations of section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act.

Racial harassment relating to conditions of employment are not actionable under section 1981, which provides, “All persons . . . shall have the same right to make and enforce contracts . . . as any white citizen,” because that provision does not apply to conduct that occurs after the formation of a contract including the breach of the contract’s terms and enforcement thereof. Rather, the harassment asserted by the petitioner is past formation conduct of the employer and, therefore, actionable only under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

WARDS COVE PACKING CO. V. ATONIO

[490 U.S. 642 (1989)] This case was brought by a class of non-white salmon cannery workers who alleged that their employer’s hiring and promotion practices were responsible for the workforce’s racial stratification. There were two types of jobs: unskilled cannery jobs, which were filled predominately by non-whites; and non-cannery jobs, mostly classified as skilled positions, which paid more and were held by whites. Statistics were used to show a high percentage of non-whites in cannery jobs and a low percentage in non-cannery positions.

The Supreme Court found that the cannery work-force did not reflect the pool of qualified job applicants or the qualified labor force population. An employer’s selection methods or employment practices cannot be said to have a disparate impact on non-whites if the absence of minorities holding such skilled jobs reflects a dearth of qualified non-white applicants. A mere showing that non-whites are underrepresented in the non-cannery jobs will not suffice for a Title VII violation.

MARTIN V. WILKS

[490 U.S. 755 (1989)] In an attempt to remedy past racial discrimination in hiring and promotion practices, the City of Birmingham and its fire department consented to hiring African Americans as firefighters as part of a settlement. White firefighters subsequently challenged the city, alleging that because of their race they were denied promotions in favor of less qualified African Americans in violation of Title VII. Promotion decisions were made on the basis of race in reliance on the consent decree. The Court held that a voluntary settlement between one group of employees and their employer cannot possibly settle the conflicting claims of another group of employees who do not join in the agreement. This settlement would result in persons being deprived of their legal rights in a proceeding to which they were not a party.

JURY SELECTION AND SERVICE

NEAL V. DELAWARE

[103 U.S. 370 (1880)] The jury commissioner’s conduct was found in violation of the U.S. Constitution when an African American criminal defendant proved that African Americans were excluded from the jury based on their race. Every citizen is afforded the right to equal protection of the laws, including that of juror selection, when jurors will pass judgment upon a defendant’s life, liberty, or property. The exclusion of members of the defendant’s race is unconstitutional.

STRAUDER V. WEST VIRGINIA

[100 U.S. 303 (1880)] The Supreme Court overturned the conviction of an African American criminal defendant due to racial discrimination in the selection of jurors. West Virginia passed a state law that prohibited African American men from eligibility to serve as members of a grand jury or a petit jury in the state. The law denied equal protection of the laws to a citizen.

VIRGINIA V. RIVES

[100 U.S. 313 (1880)] The petitioners asserted that African Americans had never been allowed to serve as jurors in their county in any case where an African American man was involved. Virginia had no formalized or specific statute restricting African American jurors from certain trials. It was held that a mixed jury in a particular case is not essential to the equal protection of the laws and that the right is not given by any state or federal statute.

HOLLINS V. OKLAHOMA

[295 U.S. 394 (1935)] Hollins, an African American, was charged with rape and convicted at a trial held in the basement of the jail. Three days before the scheduled execution, the NAACP secured a stay of execution. Later the Supreme Court of Oklahoma reversed his conviction.

The U.S. Supreme Court—in a memorandum opinion—affirmed the principle that the conviction of an African American by a jury from which all African Americans had been excluded was a denial of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

HALE V. COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY

[303 U.S. 613 (1938)] In 1936, Joe Hale, an African American, was charged with murder in McCracken County, Kentucky. Hale moved to set aside the indictment on the grounds that the jury commissioners had systematically excluded African Americans from jury lists. Hale established that one out of every six residents of the county was African American, and that at least 70 African Americans out of a total of 6,700 persons qualified for jury duty. Still, there had not been an African American on jury duty between 1906 and 1936. Hale’s conviction and death sentence were upheld by the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, but both were struck down by the Supreme Court on the grounds that he had been denied equal protection of the law.

PATTON V. MISSISSIPPI

[332 U.S. 463 (1947)] This case involved Eddie Patton, an African American who was convicted of the murder of a white man in Mississippi. At his trial and as part of his appeal, Patton alleged that all qualified African Americans had been systematically excluded from jury service solely because of race. The state maintained that since jury service was limited by statute to qualified voters and since few African Americans were qualified to vote, such a procedure was valid in the eyes of the law. The Supreme Court, however, reversed Patton’s conviction on the grounds that such a jury plan, resulting in the almost automatic elimination of African Americans from jury service, constituted an infringement on Patton’s rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.

SHEPHERD V. FLORIDA

[341 U.S. 50 (1951)] The Supreme Court reversed the convictions of a Florida state court involving African American defendants solely on the grounds that the method of selecting the grand jury discriminated against African Americans.

TURNER V. FOUCHE

[396 U.S. 346 (1970)] The Court affirmed the right of defendants to bring an action in federal court to end discrimination in jury selection.

CASTANEDA V. PARTIDA

[430 U.S. 482 (1977)] The Supreme Court upheld the use of statistical evidence demonstrating that Mexican Americans had been systematically excluded from jury selection, and that such discrimination on the basis of race or color violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The principle established in this case, that statistical evidence can be used to prove intentional discrimination, has been used in later cases involving employment, housing, voting, and education.

BATSON V. KENTUCKY

[476 U.S. 79 (1986)] Justice Lewis F. Powell, writing for the majority, held that the prosecution in a criminal case may not use its peremptory challenges—challenges to an individual juror for which no cause need be stated—to exclude African American jurors in a case involving an African American defendant.

TURNER V. MURRAY

[106 US 1683 (1986)] The Supreme Court expanded the right of African American defendants in capital cases to question potential white jurors to uncover their racial prejudices and biases.

PUBLIC ACCOMMODATIONS

HALL V. DECUIR

[95 U.S. 485 (1878)] This case involved an unsuccessful attempt of the Louisiana legislature to prohibit segregation in any form of transportation in the state. The statute was attacked as an interference with interstate commerce because it imposed a direct burden and control over common carriers when entering the state. The statute was declared unconstitutional because it required common carriers to transport African American passengers in Louisiana in the same cabin with white passengers.

CIVIL RIGHTS CASES

[332 U.S. 46, 784; 333 U.S. 831; 334 U.S. 834; 378 U.S. 226 (1883)] This group of civil rights cases was heard before the Supreme Court in an effort to determine the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the first piece of national legislation that attempted to guarantee people of all races “full and equal enjoyment” of all public accommodations including inns, public conveyances, theaters, and other places of amusement. The Court ruled, however, that the act was unconstitutional inasmuch as it did not spring directly from the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. In the view of the Court, the Thirteenth Amendment was concerned exclusively with the narrow confines of slavery and involuntary servitude. The Fourteenth Amendment did not empower Congress to enact direct legislation to counteract the effect of state laws or policies. The ruling essentially deprived African Americans of the very protections that the three postwar “freedom amendments” were designed to provide.

PLESSY V. FERGUSON

[163 U.S. 537 (1896)] Homer Plessy, an African American, was assigned to the wrong coach on a train traveling within Louisiana. Plessy was arrested for being in the wrong coach. He challenged the 1890 state statute that provided for “separate but equal” railway carriages for whites and blacks.

In the majority opinion of the Supreme Court, “separate but equal” accommodations for African Americans constituted a “reasonable” use of state police power. Furthermore, the Court said that the Fourteenth Amendment “could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based on color, or to enforce social . . . equality or a co-mingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.”

MORGAN V. COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

[328 U.S. 373 (1946)] Irene Morgan, an African American, refused to move to the rear seat of a Greyhound bus in which she was traveling from Virginia to Washington, DC. She was convicted in Virginia for violating a state statute requiring segregation of the races on all public vehicles.

NAACP attorneys carried the case through the Virginia courts and on to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was decided that the Virginia statute could not apply to interstate passengers or motor vehicles engaged in such traffic.

BOB-LO V. MICHIGAN

[333 U.S. 28 (1948)] The operator of a line of passenger ships used to transport patrons from Detroit to an island amusement park was convicted of violating the Michigan Civil Rights Act for refusing passage to an African American. The Supreme Court upheld the application of the Michigan Civil Rights Act.

RICE V. ARNOLD

[340 U.S. 848 (1950)] This case involved the successful attempt to abolish segregation on a Miami, Florida, golf course owned and operated by the city. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the judgment of the Florida Supreme Court, which had authorized the segregated use of the course.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA V. JOHN R. THOMPSON

[346 U.S. 100 (1952)] The Supreme Court unanimously held that a restaurant owner had violated federal law by discriminating against and refusing service to patrons on the basis of race.

MUIR V. LOUISVILLE PARK THEATRICAL ASSOCIATION

[347 U.S. 971 (1954)] In 1954, several African Americans were refused admission to an amphitheater located in a Louisville city park. The park was leased and operated by a privately owned group not affiliated in any way with the city. The Kentucky Court of Appeals found no evidence of unlawful discrimination, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned this judgment and remanded the case for consideration in the light of the prevailing legal climate as articulated in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE V. DAWSON

[350 U.S. 377 (1955)] The Supreme Court affirmed a judgment that the enforcement of racial segregation in public beaches and bathhouses maintained by public authorities is unconstitutional.

HOLMES V. ATLANTA

[350 U.S. 859 (1955)] This case involved a suit brought by African Americans to integrate a city-owned and operated golf course in Atlanta, Georgia. The segregated arrangements were deemed constitutionally acceptable by a lower court, but that order was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court and the case was remanded to the district court with directions to enter a decree for the plaintiffs in conformity with Mayor and City Council of Baltimore v. Dawson.

FLEMMING V. SOUTH CAROLINA ELECTRIC

[351 U.S. 901 (1956)] This case involved a suit brought by an African American passenger against a bus company for damages due to the bus driver’s having required her to change seats in accordance with South Carolina’s segregation law. The trial judge dismissed the case on the grounds that the statute in question was valid, but the court of appeals reversed this decision, holding that the “separate but equal” doctrine was no longer valid. The Supreme Court upheld the court of appeals decision.

GAYLE V. BROWDER

[352 U.S. 114 (1956)] This case challenged the constitutionality of state statutes and ordinances in Montgomery, Alabama, which required the segregation of whites and blacks on public buses. These statutes were declared unconstitutional by the decision of a three-judge federal district court. The Supreme Court affirmed.

KATZENBACH V. MCCLUNG

[379 U.S. 802 (1964)] and

HEART OF ATLANTA V. UNITED STATES

[379 U.S. 803 (1964)] The U.S. attorney general sued Ollie’s Barbecue Restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama, for its refusal to serve African Americans in its dining accommodations, a direct violation of the anti-discriminatory public accommodations clause of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, held that the Civil Rights Act could not be applied under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as there was no “demonstrable connection” between food purchased in interstate commerce and sold in a restaurant that would affect commerce. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, held that “the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as here applied, [is] plainly appropriate in the resolution of what [Congress has] found to be a national commercial problem of the first magnitude.”

The Heart of Atlanta case dealt with a Georgia motel that solicited patronage in national advertising and had several out-of-state residents as guests from time to time. The motel had already instituted the practice of refusing to rent rooms to African Americans prior to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and continued this practice afterward. The motel owner filed suit, maintaining that the Act violated his rights under both the Fifth Amendment and the Thirteenth Amendment. The United States countered with the argument that the refusal to accept African Americans interfered with interstate travel, and that Congress, in voting to apply nondiscriminatory standards to interstate commerce, was not violating either amendment. The Supreme Court upheld the right of Congressional regulation, stating that the power of Congress was not confined to the regulation of commerce among the states. “It extends to those activities intrastate which so affect interstate commerce, or the exercise of the power of Congress over it, as to make regulation of them appropriate means to the attainment of a legitimate end.”

BELL V. MARYLAND

[378 U.S. 226 (1964)] The Supreme Court ordered a Maryland district court to reconsider its affirmation of a state court conviction of 12 African Americans for trespassing when they refused to leave a restaurant that refused to serve them entirely on the basis of their color.

EVANS V. NEWTON

[382 U.S. 296 (1966)] The Supreme Court ruled that the transfer of a city park in Macon, Georgia, from municipal ownership to a board of private trustees did not remove Macon’s obligations under the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee equal rights to use the park by all citizens.

SHUTTLESWORTH V. BIRMINGHAM

[394 U.S. 147 (1969)] The Supreme Court invalidated Birmingham’s Parade-Permit Law, which had been used in 1963 to harass participants in an Easter March organized by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

NEW YORK STATE CLUB ASSOCIATION V. CITY OF NEW YORK

[108 S.Ct. 2225 (1988)] In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a New York City ordinance that forbids private clubs from discriminating against women and minorities.

INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE

LOVING V. VIRGINIA

[388 U.S. 1 (1967)] This case nullified anti-miscegenation laws. It concerned a white man and an African American woman, residents of Virginia, who married in Washington, DC. Virginia indicted and convicted them of violating its laws against racial intermarriage when the couple returned to Virginia and attempted to reside there, but released them when the couple agreed not to reside in the state for 25 years. The Lovings, however, decided to challenge the agreement and the law. Their appeal was rejected by the Virginia courts but upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled the Virginia law unconstitutional. Soon thereafter, federal district courts in other states which forbade intermarriage ordered local officials to issue marriage licenses to interracial couples applying for them.

REQUIREMENTS FOR LEGISLATIVE MEMBERSHIP

POWELL V. MCCORMACK

[395 U.S. 486 (1969)] According to the Constitution, only three basic factors govern eligibility to serve as a legislator in the U.S. House of Representatives: a minimum age requirement, the possession of U.S. citizenship, and the fulfillment of the state’s residency requirement. When U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was excluded from the 90th Congress on the grounds that he had misused public funds and defied the courts of his home state, he filed suit in federal court in an attempt to force the House of Representatives to review only the necessary credentials for membership.

The district court dismissed the first petition on the grounds that it lacked jurisdiction. By the time the case was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court, the 90th Congress had adjourned. Powell, however, was reelected and finally seated in the 91st Congress, a gesture that did not settle the case or render it moot. The legal point on which the case hinged involved the distinction between “expulsion” and “exclusion.” Despite the more than two-thirds majority required for expulsion, the Court ruled that the intent of the House was to “exclude,” not to “expel.” The Court summation stated flatly that “the House was without power to exclude him from its membership.”

RIGHT OF SALE AND RESTRICTIVE COVENANTS

BUCHANAN V. WARLEY

[245 U.S. 60 (1917)] The plaintiff brought an action for the performance of a sale of real estate in Louisville, Kentucky. The purchaser, Warley, an African American, maintained that he would be unable to occupy the land since it was located within what was defined by a Louisville ordinance as a white block. The ordinance prohibited whites from living in black districts, and vice versa. Buchanan alleged that the ordinance was in conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court maintained that the ordinance was unconstitutional.

SHELLEY V. KRAEMER

[334 U.S. 1 (1948) and

HURD V. HODGE

[334 U.S. 26 (1948)] In 1945 an African American family, the Shelleys, received a warranty deed to a parcel of land that was subject to a restrictive covenant barring its sale to African Americans. A lawsuit was subsequently brought in the Circuit Court of St. Louis seeking to divest the Shelleys of the title to the land. The Supreme Court of Missouri directed the trial court to strip the petitioners of their warranty deed. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed this decision, maintaining that restrictive covenants, though valid contracts, could not be enforced by state courts. In Hurd v. Hodge, involving a similar set of circumstances, federal courts were similarly prohibited from enforcing racially-restrictive covenants.

REITMAN V. MULKEY

[387 U.S. 369 (1967)] In 1964, California voters passed a referendum granting “absolute discretion” to real estate owners in the sale and rental of real property. Lincoln Mulkey filed suit against property owners in Orange County to challenge the validity of the referendum. Mulkey’s arguments failed in the lower courts but were accepted by the California Supreme Court on the grounds that the California referendum violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision.

JONES V. ALFRED H. MAYER, CO.

[392 U.S. 409 (1968)] Joseph Lee Jones, an African American, alleged that his race was the sole reason that a real estate agent refused to sell him a home. The Supreme Court held that 42 U.S.C. 1982, a federal statute created during the Reconstruction era to eliminate the vestiges of slavery, prohibits all racial discrimination, public and private, in the sale or rental of property.

TRAFFICANTE V. METROPOLITAN LIFE INSURANCE

[409 U.S. 205 (1972)] The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a complaint of racial discrimination in housing may be brought by parties who have not themselves been refused accommodation but who, as members of the same housing unit, allege injury by discriminatory housing practices. The suit had been filed by a black and a white resident of a housing development in San Francisco who contended that the owner of the development was depriving plaintiffs of the right to live in a racially integrated community.

SENTENCING AND INCARCERATION

MCKLESKEY V. KEMP

[481 U.S. 279 (1987)] Warren McKleskey, a 38-year-old African American man accused of killing a police officer while robbing a furniture store, was sentenced to death by the state of Georgia. In support of his claim that the sentence violated his constitutional rights, McKleskey introduced a sophisticated statistical study that analyzed more than 2,000 murder cases in Georgia. The study demonstrated that there was a disparity in the imposition of capital punishment based on the race of the victim, as well as the race of the defendant.

Defendants charged with killing white persons received the death penalty in 11 percent of the cases, but defendants charged with killing African Americans received the death penalty in only 1 percent of the cases. The study further showed that prosecutors asked for the death penalty in 70 percent of the cases involving black defendants and white victims, and only 19 percent of the cases involving white defendants and African American victims. In sum, the analysis revealed that African Americans who killed whites were 4.3 times more likely to receive a death sentence.

The Supreme Court acknowledged that it had accepted statistics as proof of intent to discriminate in employment, housing, and voting cases. The Court rejected, however, McKleskey’s claim that the death penalty in Georgia was applied in a racially discriminatory manner. The Court’s reasoning was that although McKleskey showed the existence of racial discrimination in sentencing, he failed to prove that “racial considerations played a part in his sentence.” Finally, Justice Powell expressed concern that acceptance of McKleskey’s argument would open the flood-gates of litigation by African American defendants seeking to introduce statistical evidence to demonstrate that race affected the outcome of their case.

SLAVERY

PRIGG V. PENNSYLVANIA

[16 Peters 539 (1842)] After Edward Prigg, a professional slave catcher, captured Margaret Morgan, an escaped slave residing in Pennsylvania, Prigg was tried and convicted under an 1826 Pennsylvania anti-kidnapping statute. Hearing the case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Pennsylvania law was unconstitutional on the grounds that the statute interfered with Congress’s power under Art. IV, sec. 2 of the Constitution.

STRADER V. GRAHAM

[10 Howard 82 (1850)] In 1841, three slaves owned by Christopher Graham of Kentucky, boarded a steamboat owned by Jacob Strader and traveled to Cincinnati. They ultimately escaped to freedom in Canada. Graham sued Strader for the value of the slaves and the expenses incurred while trying to recover them. Graham won the case. Strader appealed, though, claiming that the slaves had become free under Ohio law and provisions of the Northwest Ordinance. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that each state had the right to determine the status of slaves within its jurisdiction, that the status of these slaves was to be determined by the state of Kentucky, and that the Northwest Ordinance was no longer in force, since those territories had become states.

DRED SCOTT V. SANDFORD

[19 Howard 393 (1857)] In 1835, Dred Scott became the property of John Emerson, a U.S. Army doctor, in the slave state of Missouri. From there, he was taken into the free state of Illinois and later to the free territory of Wisconsin. In 1847, Scott initiated suit in the circuit court of St. Louis County, arguing that he should be given his freedom by virtue of having resided on free soil. After nine years, his case came before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In delivering his opinion, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney declared that, by virtue of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, African Americans could not be regarded as citizens of the United States. Moreover, the Court could not deprive slaveholders of their right to take slaves into any part of the Union. In effect, therefore, the Missouri Compromise, as well as other antislavery legislation, was declared to be unconstitutional.

ABLEMAN V. BOOTH

[21 Howard 506 (1859)] Abolitionist Sherman Booth was held in a state jail for violating the federal fugitive slave laws by helping a slave escape to freedom. Booth secured a writ of habeas corpus from a state judge who declared the federal laws unconstitutional; the Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld Congress’s fugitive slave law and all its provisions, ruling that the state court had stepped beyond its sphere of authority. Although the Wisconsin government was deemed sovereign within its territorial limits, it was limited and restricted by the U.S. Constitution. Booth’s conviction was upheld.

STATE AND LOCAL AFFIRMATIVE ACTION REQUIREMENTS

UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA V. BRIAN WEBER

[433 U.S. 193 (1979)] The United Steelworkers of America and Kaiser Aluminum Company entered into a collective bargaining agreement including a voluntary affirmative action plan designed to eliminate conspicuous racial imbalances in Kaiser’s almost exclusively white skilled workforce. The plant in Gramercy, Louisiana, agreed to reserve 50 percent of the openings in the skilled job training programs for African Americans until the percentage of black skilled workers was equal to the percentage of blacks in the local labor force. Brian Weber, a white production worker, who was turned down for the training program although he had more seniority than many accepted blacks, sued the United Steelworkers of America, claiming that the affirmative action program discriminated against whites.

The Supreme Court limited the issue to the narrow question of whether Title VII prohibited private employers and unions from establishing voluntary affirmative action plans. In a 5–2 decision, the Court upheld the affirmative action plan and established three factors to determine the validity of racial preference. The Court approved the plan because it was designed to break down Kaiser’s historic patterns of racial segregation, it did not unnecessarily diminish the rights of white employees since it did not require the firing of white employees, and it was a temporary measure not intended to maintain racial balance but simply to eliminate an imbalance.

FULLILOVE V. KLUTZNIK

[448 U.S. 448 (1980)] The Supreme Court upheld a provision of the Public Works Employment Act of 1977 that required a 10 percent set-aside of federal funds for minority business enterprises on local public works projects. The provision had been challenged as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

FIREFIGHTERS LOCAL UNION NO. 1784 V. STOTTS

[467 U.S. 561 (1984)] In May 1981, for the first time in its history, the city of Memphis announced layoffs of city employees due to a projected budget deficit. The layoffs, which also affected the fire department, were to be made based on a citywide seniority system that had been adopted in 1973. Carl Stotts, an African American fire-fighter, sued to stop the layoffs, claiming that since blacks had been hired pursuant to the affirmative action provisions of a 1980 court decree, they would be laid off in far greater numbers than their white coworkers. In a 6–3 decision, the Court held that since the 1980 court decree did not say that African Americans had special protection during a layoff, the layoffs had to be made according to the 1973 seniority system.

WYGANT V. JACKSON BOARD OF EDUCATION

[476 U.S. 267 (1986)] The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow to affirmative action in this case involving a public school system’s affirmative action plan. The record reflected that the first African American school teacher was not hired in Jackson, Michigan, until 1953. By 1969, only 3.9 percent of the teachers were African American although 15.2 percent of the students were African American. In response, the school board developed an affirmative action plan that protected African American faculty members during layoffs.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court had approved affirmative action plans in prior cases, it rejected the Jackson plan. The Court found that the goal of the plan—to remedy societal discrimination and afford positive role models to African American students—was nebulous and not sufficiently compelling.

LOCAL NO. 93, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FIREFIGHTERS V. CITY OF CLEVELAND

[106 S.Ct. 3063 (1986)] The city of Cleveland, Ohio, which had a long history of racial discrimination, negotiated a consent decree with black firefighters who had filed a lawsuit alleging that they had been unlawfully denied jobs and promotions. The decree included an affirmative action plan with numerical goals for promotion of blacks to the position of supervisor. In response to the union’s challenge on behalf of white firefighters, the Supreme Court ruled that the lower courts had broad discretion to approve decrees in which employers settle discrimination suits by agreeing to preferential promotions of blacks, in spite of the objections of white employees.

LOCAL 28, SHEET METAL WORKERS INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION V. EEOC

[106 S.Ct. 3019 (1986)] After finding that the all-white union had discriminated against African Americans and Hispanics seeking to enter the sheet metal trades for more than a decade, the trial court ordered the union to establish a 29 percent non-white membership goal. The court also ruled that the union would have to pay substantial fines if the union failed to meet the goals. After the union failed to reach the goal, the court found the union in contempt and established a new goal of 29.3 percent. The union challenged the court’s order.

The Supreme Court upheld the affirmative action goal in light of the union’s “persistent or egregious discrimination” and to eliminate “lingering effects of pervasive discrimination.” This was the first time the Court expressly approved the use of race conscious relief to African Americans and Hispanics who were not identified victims of discrimination.

UNITED STATES V. PARADISE

[480 U.S. 149 (1987)] This case originated in 1972 when the NAACP sued the Alabama Department of Highways because of its long-standing history of racially discriminating employment practices. More than 11 years later, after the department had failed to hire or promote African Americans, the trial court ordered the promotion of one black trooper for every white. The U.S. attorney general challenged the constitutionality of the plan. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of strict racial quotas and found that the plan was “narrowly tailored to serve the compelling government interest” of remedying “egregious” past discrimination against African Americans.

JOHNSON V. TRANSPORTATION AGENCY, SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

[480 U.S. 616 (1987)] The U.S. Supreme Court held that the state transportation agency’s voluntary affirmative action plan, under which a female had been promoted to the position of road dispatcher over a male, was consistent with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Court held that an employer does not have to admit or prove that it has discriminated in order to justify efforts designed to achieve a more racially balanced work-force. The employer only needs to demonstrate that there is a “conspicuous . . . imbalance in traditionally segregated job categories.”

CITY OF RICHMOND V. J. A. CROSON CO.

[109 S.Ct. 706 (1989)] The Court upheld a court of appeals decision that Richmond’s Minority Business Utilization Plan was not sufficiently narrowly tailored to remedy past discrimination in the construction industry. The plan allowed minorities a fixed 30 percent quota of the public contracts based solely on their race.

ADARAND CONSTRUCTORS, INC. V. PEÑA

[115 S.Ct. 2097 (1995)] The Court ruled that affirmative action programs of the federal government that award construction contracts can only be acceptable if they show a compelling interest for the program and the program is narrowly tailored to accomplish this interest.

ATTORNEYS, JUDGES, AND LEGAL SCHOLARS

(To locate biographical profiles more readily, please consult the index at the back of the book.)

CLIFFORD L. ALEXANDER JR. (1933– ) Attorney, Federal Government Official

Clifford Leopold Alexander Jr. was born in New York City on September 21, 1933. Alexander went to Harvard and earned his B.A. in 1955, graduating cum laude. He attended Yale Law School and, in 1958, earned his LL.B. He then became the assistant district attorney of New York County from 1959 to 1961. He was the executive director of the Hamilton Grange Neighborhood Conservation district in Manhattanville from 1961 to 1962. In 1963, he became a staff member of the National Security Council.

Alexander was hired by President Lyndon Johnson as his deputy special assistant in 1964, and quickly rose to become the president’s deputy special counsel. He became chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1967, where he was accused of bullying reluctant employers into complying with federal guidelines for minority employment. In 1969, he left the position.

From 1969 to 1976, Alexander worked for several different law firms. He also became a Harvard overseer. At Harvard, he was involved in working with craft unions to improve minority employment opportunities.

President Jimmy Carter appointed Alexander secretary of the Department of the Army, the first African American to serve in that position. Alexander won the Outstanding Civilian Service Award from the Department of the Army in 1980. Since 1981, Alexander has been president of Alexander Associates, Inc., and served as a consultant on minority hiring practices to Major League Baseball. In the early 1990s, Alexander served as the District of Columbia’s chief negotiator in hammering out a deal to build a new stadium for the National Football League’s Washington Redskins.

In addition, Alexander has had his own television program Black on White, has been director of several Dreyfus money funds, has served on the board of directors for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and has taught at Howard University.

JOYCE LONDON ALEXANDER (1949– ) Judge

Joyce London Alexander was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1949. She graduated in 1969 from Howard University after studying there on a scholarship from the NAACP. She worked for U.S. Representative and Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.), and then graduated in 1972 from the New England School of Law.

She practiced law for several public foundations and worked as an assistant professor at Tufts University before being appointed to a U.S. district court as a magistrate. In 1996, she was named chief judge, becoming the first African American so honored.

Alexander is known for her activities in the legal community. She has held various positions for the National Bar Association and has founded several educational programs for her peers. In 2002, she served as General Counsel for the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education and as a legal editor for WBZ-TV in addition to remaining an assistant professor at Tufts.

VIOLETTE ANDERSON (1882–1937) Judge, Attorney

Violette Neatley Anderson was born on July 16, 1882, in London, England. Her family moved to the United States, where she attended North Division High School in Chicago, Illinois, from 1895 to 1899. She then attended the Chicago Athenaeum in 1903, the Chicago Seminar of Sciences from 1912 to 1915, and Chicago Law School from 1917 to 1920, where she earned her LL.B. in 1920, the same year that she wed Albert E. Johnson.

Anderson worked as a court reporter from 1905 to 1920, which sparked her interest in law. She began a private practice in 1920, becoming the first African American woman to practice law in the U.S. District Court, Eastern Division. From 1922 to 1923, she served as the first female city prosecutor in Chicago.

After five years of practice before the high court of Illinois, Anderson was admitted to practice for the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the first African American woman to obtain this post. Her admission became a precedent for other African American women.

Anderson also belonged to the Federal Colored Women’s Clubs, was the first vice president of the Cook County Bar Association, president of Friendly Big Sisters League of Chicago, and secretary of the Idlewild Lot Owners Association. In addition, she was a member of the executive board of the Chicago Council of Social Agencies. She died on December 24, 1937.

DEBORAH A. BATTS (1947– ) Judge

The first openly lesbian federal judge, Batts was confirmed in 1994 to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A graduate of Radcliffe and the Harvard Law School, Batts clerked for a federal judge before joining Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where she worked as a litigator for six years. Next she served as assistant U.S. attorney in New York for five years before accepting a teaching post at Fordham University in 1994.

A supporter of equal rights for gays and lesbians, Batts is known to be an independent thinker unafraid to speak her mind. She was drawn to the legal field after experiencing the political turmoil of the 1960s. She was initially recommended for a federal judgeship during the Bush administration but did not receive a nomination. U.S. Senator Daniel Moynihan recommended her a second time when President Bill Clinton assumed office. Clinton’s nomination of Batts was confirmed by the Senate with no challenges on May 6, 1994.

DERRICK ALBERT BELL JR. (1930– ) Attorney, Educator

Derrick Albert Bell Jr. was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 6, 1930. He attended Duquesne University and received his LL.B. from the University of Pittsburgh Law School. He married Jewel A. Hairston and the couple has three children. Bell is a member of the bar in Washington, DC, Pennsylvania, New York, California; the U.S. Supreme

Court; the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Tenth Circuits; and several federal district courts. Bell has written several important books on the law including Race, Racism and American Law, (3rd ed., 1992), and And We Are Not Saved:The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (1987). Bell also served as editor of Desegregation Dialogue, Searching for Remedies Under Brown.

After graduating from law school, Bell worked for the U.S. Department of Justice from 1957 to 1959, the Pittsburgh Branch of the NAACP as executive secretary from 1959 to 1960, and for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as staff attorney from 1960 to 1966. In 1966 he was made deputy assistant to the secretary for civil rights for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. He also served for a year as the director of the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

Bell began as a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School in 1969, became a professor in 1971, and left in 1980 to be dean of the University of Oregon Law School for five years. After spending one year teaching at Stanford University, he returned to Harvard Law School in 1986. Four years later, Bell took an unpaid extended leave from his teaching duties at Harvard in protest over the institution’s lack of a tenured black woman professor. Bell was formally removed from his position in 1992. His book-length works include: Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1992), Confronting Authority: Reflections of an Ardent Protester (1994), Gospel Choirs: Psalms of Survival in an Alien Land Called Home (1996), Afrolantica Legacies (1998), Ethical Ambition: Living for a Life of Meaning and Worth (2003), and Silent Covenants: “Brown v. Board of Education” and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (2004).

JANE MATILDA BOLIN (1908–2007) Judge, Attorney

At the age of 31, Jane Matilda Bolin was honored by being chosen to be the first African American female judge in the United States. She presided over the Domestic Relations Court of the City of New York (subsequently called the Family Court of the State of New York) for 40 years. Her first ten-year appointment came from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in 1939. She was appointed to three more successive ten-year terms by mayors William O’Dwyer, Robert F. Wagner Jr., and John Lindsay. After her fourth term, however, Bolin reached the mandatory retirement age.

Bolin was born on April 11, 1908, in Poughkeepsie, New York, her father was the first African American graduate of Williams College. Bolin attended Wellesley College and Yale University School of Law, where she received her LL.B. in 1931. She worked with her father until she passed the New York State Bar examination and then practiced in Poughkeepsie before moving to New York City to practice law with her husband, Ralph E. Mizelle.

In 1937, Bolin was appointed assistant corporation counsel for New York City, a post that she held until she received her appointment to the Domestic Relations Court. Outside of her career, Bolin has taken an active role in the Wiltwyck School for Boys, the Child Welfare League of America, the Neighborhood Children’s Center, and the local and national NAACP. She has also traveled extensively and met several heads of state in Africa. Her friends included Eleanor Roosevelt, educator Mary McLeod Bethune, and Judge Waties Waring, who ruled in the first public school desegregation case. Bolin has received honorary degrees from Morgan State University, Western College for Women, Tuskegee Institute, Hampton University, and Williams College.

After her retirement, Bolin became a volunteer reading teacher for the New York City public schools. She received an appointment to the Regents Review Committee of the New York State Board of Regents, which holds hearings involving professional discipline of more than 32 professions. Bolin was honored for her distinguished service by the corporation counsel’s office on May 17, 1993. She died in New York City in early 2007.

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JOHNNIE COCHRAN (1937–2005) Attorney

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana on October 2, 1937, Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. grew up in Los Angeles. He received a

B.A. in 1959 from the University of California. After finishing his law studies at the Loyola Marymount University School of Law in 1963, he passed the California bar exam. Cochran began his law career as prosecutor in the criminal division of the deputy city attorney’s office in Los Angeles. In 1965, he left that post to join criminal lawyer Gerald Lenoir in private practice. He then created the firm of Cochran, Atkins & Evans.

During his first stint in private practice, Cochran established himself by defending high-profile African American clients, such as the family of Leonard Dead-wyler, a young man shot to death by police while driving his pregnant wife to the hospital, and Geronimo Pratt, a former Black Panther charged with murder. Cochran lost both cases, but he demonstrated how such cases could garner media attention and foment action among the African American community.

Cochran returned to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office in 1978. After two years as a prosecutor, he returned to private practice in 1980. Shortly thereafter, Cochran won a settlement for the family of Ron Settles, who had been strangled by police officers, though his death was originally identified as a suicide.

Cochran’s victories increased, and he began representing celebrities such as pop singer Michael Jackson and actor Todd Bridges. Beginning in the summer of 1994, Cochran served as one of the team of defense lawyers for O. J. Simpson, accused of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Cochran wore down the prosecution by challenging evidence and concentrating on racially prejudiced officers. Cochran’s racially charged closing arguments alleged the police framed O. J. Simpson for murder. In response, the jury acquitted Simpson on all counts.

Following the Simpson case—described in the media as “The Trial of the Century”—Cochran became one of the best known lawyers in the country and was offered a million-dollar advance for his memoirs. Cochran has served as an adjunct professor at both the Los Angeles School of Law and the Loyola University School of Law. He served as chairman of the Rules Committee of the Democratic National Convention in 1984. In 1995, he was awarded the Trumpet Award by the Turner Broadcasting System.

Beginning in 1997, Cochran took part in a daily show for “Court TV.” He left the show in 1999 to create “The Cochran Firm,” one of the largest personal injury law firms in America, and in 2002 announced that he was organizing yet another firm to look into the possibility of reparations for the descendants of former slaves.

Cochran died on March 29, 2005.

WILLIAM T. COLEMAN (1920– ) Civil Rights Activist, Cabinet Officer

William T. Coleman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 7, 1920. Coleman graduated summa cum laude in 1941 from the University of Pennsylvania. His law studies at Harvard University were interrupted by World War II, but he returned to the school after the war and, in 1946, received his LL.B., graduating first in his class. He was also the first African American to serve on the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review.

In 1948, Coleman became the first African American to clerk for a Supreme Court Justice, when he clerked for Justice Felix Frankfurter. In the mid-1950s, Coleman joined the Philadelphia firm of Dilworth, Paxon, Kalish, Levy & Green. By the mid-1960s, he had become a partner in the firm. In 1959, Coleman served on an employment commission for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and served Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon.

Coleman played an important role in many landmark civil rights cases. He coauthored the brief presented to the court in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas and served as cocounsel on McLaughlin v. Florida (1964), which established the constitutionality of interracial marriages. In 1971, he was elected president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

In 1975, President Gerald Ford appointed Coleman as the secretary of transportation. Coleman reorganized the department and issued a statement of the depart-ment’s goals. President Ford’s defeat in the 1976 election ended his reign at the department. Coleman returned to private practice in Washington, D.C. In 1995, President Bill Clinton presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

GEORGE CROCKETT JR. (1909–1997) Attorney, Judge, Legislator, Civil Rights Activist

Born in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 10, 1909, George William Crockett Jr. began working when he was 12 and graduated from Morehouse College in 1931. After traveling north to Michigan to pursue a law degree, Crockett returned to his hometown and opened a law practice. In 1939, his accomplishments as a lawyer and community activist led him to be chosen as the first African American attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice.

While in Washington, DC, Crockett distinguished himself as counsel for cases concerning the Fair Labor Standards Act, and in 1943, his work led to his appointment by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as an examiner with the Fair Employment Practices Committee. That same year, he was hired by the United Auto Workers in Detroit to serve as director of their Fair Employment Practices Office during a time of increased racial tensions in the city. In 1946, he went into private practice in Detroit in a firm that took on significant civil rights cases. Crockett once argued a case on behalf of accused Communists, which landed him in prison for four months for contempt of court.

Crockett became intensely involved in the civil rights struggle in the South during the 1960s, leaving Michigan for a time to direct the National Lawyers Guild’s civil rights effort, Project Mississippi. In 1966, he was elected to Detroit Recorder’s Court, a bench that handled the city’s criminal docket. In 1969, members of a leftist group who were meeting at an African American church were brought en masse into police custody after a shooting outside the church. Crockett went down to the station in the middle of the night and set up his own impromptu court, releasing most of the people charged on the basis of constitutional law. He was vilified by Detroit’s white establishment for his application of the Bill of Rights.

In 1980, two years after he had left the Recorder’s Court bench, Crockett was elected as a Democratic Congressional representative for a Michigan district that included part of Detroit. He served in Washington for the next decade, continuing to distinguish himself by speaking out on civil rights issues and even serving another stint in jail for participating in a demonstration against apartheid in South Africa. The legislator was also a vocal opponent of the Reagan administration’s policies in Central America, especially during his tenure as chair of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. After his retirement from politics in 1990, Crockett, founder of the National Bar Association Judicial Council, died in 1997.

DREW S. DAYS III (1941– ) Attorney, Educator

Days was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on August 29, 1941. He received his B.A. from Hamilton College in 1963 and continued his studies at the Yale Law School. During his free summer months, Days returned to Georgia to champion civil rights causes and represent the poor as an intern. After graduating in 1966 from law school near the top of his class, Days moved to Chicago to represent minorities in cases of housing discrimination in the city. Later, Days quit practicing law to work in Honduras for the U.S. Peace Corps.

Upon his return to the United States, Days worked in the Legal Defense and Educational Fund for the NAACP. At the same time, he served as an associate professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1977, Days accepted a post as the first African American as the head of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1980, Days left the government position to teach at Yale University.

In 1992, President Bill Clinton nominated Days to the position of solicitor general of the United States, the second leading position at the Justice Department. In this position, Days criticized poorly conceived or poorly managed minority assistance programs. In 1995, he argued before the Supreme Court to keep in place minority voting districts in the Deep South. Early in 1996, Days resigned his position at the Justice Department and once again returned to Yale Law School.

JEROME FARRIS (1930– ) Attorney, Judge

Judge Joseph Jerome Farris was born on March 4, 1930, in Birmingham, Alabama. He earned his B.S. degree from Morehouse College in 1951, and in 1952, joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He received a M.S.W. from Atlanta University in 1955 and received his J.D. from the University of Washington in 1958. Farris is married to Jean Shy and has two children.

Farris began his legal career in 1958 with the firm of Weyer, Schroeter, and Sterne. In 1959 he became a partner. He remained in private practice until 1969, when he became a Washington State Court of Appeals judge. Farris served as the chairman of the State Federal Judicial Council of Washington from 1983-1987. In addition, he served as president on the Washington State Jr. Chamber of Commerce from 1965-1966; a trustee with the Pacific Northwest Ballet from 1978-1983; and since 1985, as a regent of the University of Washington.

President Jimmy Carter nominated Farris to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in July 1979. The nomination was confirmed by the Senate on September 26, 1979, and in March 1995, Farris assumed senior status.

Farris has been honored with the Clayton Frost Award from the Jaycees in 1966, received an honorary LL.D. from Morehouse College in 1978, and the Order of the Coif from the University of Washington Law School.

ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKé (1849–1930) Attorney, Writer, Activist, Diplomat

Archibald Henry Grimké was born on a plantation near Charleston, South Carolina, on August 17, 1849. His father, a white slaveowner, was a successful lawyer. His mother had been a family slave and served as the nurse for Henry Grimké’s first wife, Selena. Archibald was considered a slave at the time. He, along with his mother and siblings, were passed on to relatives after his father’s death. Grimké attended a special school during his youth. Grimké enrolled in a school directed by Frances Pillsbury and impressed the instructors there with his superior academic abilities. He completed undergraduate studies in only three years and obtained his master’s degree in 1872 from Lincoln University.

Grimké moved to Boston where he practiced law from 1875 to 1883. Beginning in 1885, he presided over the Women’s Suffrage Association of Massachusetts. In the early 1890s, Grimké wrote for Boston-area publications, before being appointed the American consul for Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) for four years. He then assumed the presidential role for the Washington chapter of the NAACP while writing, lecturing, and presiding over the American Negro Academy. Grimké wrote several books including biographies of William Lloyd Garrison (1891) and Charles Sumner (1892), numerous essays, and speeches. He died on February 25, 1930.

WILLIAM H. HASTIE (1904–1976) Attorney, Judge, State Government Official

From 1949 to 1971, William Henry Hastie served as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the Third Circuit, the first African American man to hold a federal appellate court position. Hastie was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, November 17, 1904. He was the son of William Henry and Roberta Child Hastie. He received his A.B. from Amherst College in 1925, an LL.B.in 1930, and an S.J.D. in 1933 from Harvard University. He received honorary LL.D.s from many institutions including Rutgers University, Howard University, and Temple University. In 1943, he married Beryl Lockhart. The couple had three children.

Hastie was admitted to the bar in 1930 and was in private practice from 1930 to 1933. In 1933, he became assistant solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior, where he served until 1937. In 1937, he became a judge for the District Court of the Virgin Islands, leaving in 1939 to become dean of the Howard University School of Law. In 1942, he was the first civilian aide to the secretary of war. He was governor of the Virgin Islands between 1946 and 1949, before his subsequent position as a U.S. circuit court judge. Hastie was also a trustee of the Amherst College and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hastie died on April 14, 1976, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

JOSEPH W. HATCHETT (1932– ) Attorney, Judge, Author

Judge Joseph Woodrow Hatchett was the first African American to be appointed to the highest court of a state since Reconstruction, the first African American to be elected to public office in a statewide election in the South, and the first African American to serve on a federal appellate court in the South.

Born in Clearwater, Florida, on September 17, 1932, Hatchett received his A.B. from Florida A&M University in 1954 and his J.D. from Howard University in 1959. He also has certification in his specialties—a Naval Justice School Certificate in 1973, an Appellate Judge Course in 1977, and an American Academy of Judicial Education Appellate Judge Course in 1978.

From 1959 to 1966, Hatchett was in private practice in Florida, where he also served as the contract consultant for the city of Daytona Beach. He became an assistant U.S. attorney in Jacksonville in 1966, then served as the first assistant of the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida. In 1971, he became the U.S. magistrate for the Middle District of Florida, and was a justice for the Florida State Supreme Court from 1975 to 1979. A nominee of President Jimmy Carter, Hatchett was a circuit judge for the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals from 1979 until his transfer to the Eleventh Circuit on October 1, 1981. In 1996 he became chief judge of the court, serving in that capacity until his retirement on May 14, 1999.

Hatchett was honored with a Howard University Post Graduation Achievement Award in 1977, named Most Outstanding Citizen by the Broward County National Bar Association in 1976, received a Medallion for Human Relations from Bethune-Cookman in 1975, and has been awarded several honorary doctorates. He is the author of multiple publications in the field of law.

A. LEON HIGGINBOTHAM JR. (1928–1998) Judge, Author

Aloysius Leon Higginbotham Jr. was appointed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter as a judge of the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and became the circuit’s chief judge before his retirement in 1993. He had served on the Federal Trade Commission—the first African American and the youngest person ever to hold the post of commissioner. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, on February 25, 1928, Higginbotham began as an engineering student at Purdue University, but later went to Antioch College to study liberal arts. He received his LL.B. in 1952 from Yale School of Law.

After graduation, he became an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia and later moved into private practice. He was sought out by Pennsylvania Governor David Lawrence to become a member of the Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission. Elected president of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP, Higginbotham later earned the honor of “One of the 10 Outstanding Young Men in America” by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce. He was appointed a federal district judge in 1964, where he served until his appointment as a federal appellate judge in 1977. Higginbotham was also a lecturer at Harvard Law School and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1993, he was nominated for a position on the New York Times Co. board of directors.

In 1995, a retired Higginbotham levied criticism at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whose judicial philosophy differed greatly from his own. While Higginbotham advocated social engineering through legislation, Thomas vigorously held that law should be colorblind. Higginbotham was criticized for what some saw as an unprovoked attack on a colleague.

Higginbotham was known for his writing. He authored more than 100 articles as well as an acclaimed book, In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period. He was also praised for his logic and language. In his esteemed career, he won more than 40 honorary degrees. Higginbotham was awarded the nation’s highest medal in 1995, when the Presidential Medal of Freedom was bestowed upon him by President Bill Clinton.

ANITA HILL (1956– ) Educator, Author, Lecturer

Born on July 30, 1956, in Morns, Oklahoma, Anita Faye Hill was a relatively unknown law professor at the University of Oklahoma until 1991. It was during the Senate confirmation hearings for eventual U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that Hill became famous. She came forward with sexual harassment charges against Judge Thomas that shocked the nation. Television cameras and viewers watched as she poured out details of Thomas’s alleged wrongdoings, purportedly committed when both had worked for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Hill claimed that Thomas repeatedly pressured her to date him, told her plots of pornographic movies, and bragged about his sexual exploits. When asked why she did not quit her job or report Thomas when the incidents occurred during the early 1980s, Hill answered that she feared she would not be able to get another job. Thomas told a conflicting story, and without corroborative evidence for either side, was confirmed by the Senate.

Following the hearings, Hill continued to be hounded by the press. Several books were written and a 76-minute documentary composed of testimony clips entitled Sex and Justice: The Highlights of the Anita Hill Clarence Thomas Hearings was released. Her experience with the hearings changed her life. She decided to take a year-long sabbatical in order to look at the possibility of founding an institute with the purpose of researching racism and sexism. Hill also made many speeches around the country.

Controversy did not escape her on campus. Several lawmakers made news when they requested that Hill be fired. However, the University of Oklahoma dean and other members of the faculty supported her. In 1993, a university professorship to be established in Hill’s name was proposed. Though the suggestion met much opposition, the endowed chair was approved two years later. The Anita Faye Hill Professorship, which was dropped in 1999 under renewed political pressure, provided a salary and money for research and travel expenses incurred in the study of women’s rights in the workplace.

On March 9, 1995, Hill announced her resignation from the university, but after taking an unpaid leave during which she intended to write, she resumed her teaching post in September of the same year. In 1997, Hill joined the faculty of Brandeis University as a professor of social policy, law, and women’s studies in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

Race, Gender, and Power in America, co-edited by Hill and Emma Coleman Jordan, was published in 1995. Hill’s second book, Speaking Truth to Power, came out in 1997.

CHARLES HAMILTON HOUSTON (1895–1950) Attorney, Educational Administrator

Charles Hamilton Houston was born in Washington, D.C., on September 3, 1895. After he finished high school at the age of 15, he attended Amherst College and earned his A.B. in 1915 as one of six valedictorians. He briefly taught English, then enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1917, and served in France and Germany. He attended Harvard Law School and became the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He received his LL.B. in 1922, and was in the top five percent of his class. He also became the first African American to receive an S.J.D. in 1923 from Harvard University. Later that year he received a Sheldon Fellowship and studied civil law at the University of Madrid. In 1924, he was admitted to the Washington, D.C., bar association in 1924.

Houston was in private practice with his father from 1924 to 1950. Between 1929 and 1935, he was vice dean of the school of law at Howard University. He was special counsel to the NAACP from 1935 to 1940 and a member of the National Legal Aid Committee from 1940 to 1950. He served as the vice president for the American Council on Race Relations from 1944 to 1950, and was a member of the President’s Commission on Fair Employment Practices in 1944.

While with the NAACP, Houston teamed with the American Fund for Public Service to direct a program of legal action and education aimed at the elimination of segregation. Former student Thurgood Marshall served under Houston for several years. While in this position, Houston argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court including Missouri ex rel. Lloyd Gaines v. Canada. The court ruled that Missouri could not keep an African American from attending the white state law school because no such school existed for African Americans.

Historically, Houston’s major impact was in his strengthening of Howard University’s Law School, as well as his work in civil rights litigation. Many of the cases he argued were instrumental in setting precedents that were to be used in the historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas and Bolling v. Sharpe cases that outlawed racial segregation. In addition, he was a columnist for The Afro-American.

Houston died April 22, 1950, of a heart ailment and was buried in Lincoln Memorial Cemetery. Five Supreme Court justices attended his funeral. He received a great deal of recognition after his death including the Spingarn Medal awarded by the NAACP.

NORMA HOLLOWAY JOHNSON (1932– ) Judge

Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Norma Holloway Johnson left Louisiana at the age of 14 to attend high school in Baltimore, Maryland. She was the valedictorian in 1955 at Miner Teacher’s College, and graduated in 1962 from the Georgetown Law Center while working as a teacher.

Johnson worked in the Justice Department until 1967, when she became chief of the juvenile division for the District of Columbia. In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon appointed her associate judge for the district’s superior court. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter nominated Johnson to fill a vacant seat on the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia. She was confirmed by the Senate on May 9, 1980. Johnson served as chief judge of the court from 1997 to 2001, and on June 18, 2001, assumed senior status. During her tenure, she rendered many high-profile decisions involving corruption and civil rights.

ELAINE R. JONES (1944– ) Attorney, Organization Executive, Civil Rights Activist

Jones was born on March 2, 1944, in Norfolk, Virginia. She earned a B.A. with honors in 1965 from Howard University, and became the first African American female law student admitted to the University of Virginia School of Law.

Jones received her law degree in 1970 and was offered a job with a prestigious Wall Street firm. She eventually turned down the job on Wall Street and went to work instead for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). The LDF had argued more cases before the Supreme Court than any other organization except the U.S. Department of Justice.

In 1973, Jones became the managing attorney in the LDF’s New York City office. In the late 1970s, she helped set up and run the LDF’s new Washington, D.C., office. In 1988, Jones was promoted to deputy director-counsel of the LDF, making her second-in-command to the director, Julius Chambers. Jones used this higher profile position to challenge the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush on their federal judicial appointments. She was an outspoken opponent of both Robert Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991.

Julius Chambers resigned from the LDF directorship in 1993, and the organization’s board unanimously chose Jones to succeed him. As president and director-counsel, Jones broadened the organization’s agenda to include more cases of environmental and health care discrimination. In addition to litigation, she is concerned with the group’s fund-raising efforts.

NATHANIEL R. JONES (1926– ) Judge, Civil Rights Activist

Born on May 13, 1926, in Youngstown, Ohio, Nathaniel Raphael Jones is a judge, attorney, and administrator. President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 5, 1979, where he served until his retirement on March 30, 2002. Prior to that, he was general counsel for the NAACP from 1969 to 1979; executive director of the Fair Employment Practices Commission of the city of Youngstown, Ohio, from 1966 to 1969; in private practice; and a U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.

While with the NAACP, Judge Jones organized the attack against northern school segregation and also argued in the Supreme Court case Bradley v. Milliken. The Dayton and Columbus, Ohio, school desegregation cases heard before the Supreme Court were also organized by Jones. He has headed a three-man team that investigated grievances of African American servicemen in Germany and responded to the attacks against affirmative action. He was made deputy general counsel to the President’s Commission on Civil Disorders in 1967 and co-chairman of the Civilian Military Task Force on Military Justice in 1972.

Jones received a B.A. from Youngstown University in 1951, and an LL.B. in 1956. He has honorary degrees from Youngstown University and Syracuse University. In April 2002, Jones joined the law firm of Blank Rome as senior counsel.

STAR JONES (1962– ) Attorney

Star Jones was born Starlet Marie Jones in 1962 and grew up in Trenton, New Jersey. She shortened her name in 1979 upon entering American University. Jones took an active role in college and even served as a national officer of Alpha Kappa Alpha. After earning a law degree from the University of Houston, Jones went to work for the Kings County District Attorney’s office, whose jurisdiction included the crime-plagued New York City borough of Brooklyn. She served as a member of its prosecuting staff from 1986 until her promotion to senior assistant district attorney in 1991.

The year 1991 also landed Jones an invitation to appear on Court TV, a cable television network that broadcasts high-profile trials interjected with commentary from experts on the judicial system. The channel soon hired her to appear regularly in conjunction with the William Kennedy Smith rape trial in Florida. Jones’s performance earned her network attention.

NBC lured her away from her tough job at the Brooklyn D.A.’s office by offering her its legal correspondent slot. During the two years she appeared on the network, several notable trials attracted the attention of the American viewing public. Jones provided commentary as well as explanation of some of the more complex legal points involved on both the Today show and NBC Nightly News. The cases included the criminal trial of the Los Angeles police officers charged with beating motorist Rodney King and the rape trial of boxer Mike Tyson.

In 1994, Group W Communications offered Jones her own syndicated television show. Debuting that fall, Jones & Jury gave parties to pending “small claims” lawsuits a chance to resolve their disputes on television before a studio audience. Jones would then render the verdict. The show was cancelled in 1995.

The cancellation did not mean the end of Jones’s television career, as she became a co-host for the ABC daytime talk show The View from 1997 to 2006. Jones has been nominated for the Emmy award for Outstanding Talk Show Host for her continuing analysis and clarification of social and legal events. On November 13, 2004, Jones married banker Al Reynolds following considerable sustained publicity.

Jones has published two books, You Have to Stand for Something, or You’ll Fall for Anything (1998) and Shine: A Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Journey to Finding Love (2006). In 2002 she launched a nonprofit foundation, The Starlet Fund, aimed at benefitting women and girls around the world. It was announced that Jones would take a position with Court TV as executive editor of daytime programming in mid-2007.

AMALYA LYLE KEARSE (1937– ) Judge

Judge Amalya Lyle Kearse was born June 11, 1937, in Vauxhall, New Jersey. She received her B.A. in 1959 from Wellesley College, and her J.D. in 1962 from the University of Michigan. Kearse was in private practice from 1962 to 1969 and worked as an adjunct lecturer for the New York University Law School from 1968 to 1969. On June 21, 1979, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to a judg-ship in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Kearse has won the Jason L. Honigman Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Law Review Editorial Board. She has also served on the board of directors for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as well as the National Urban League. She was appointed to the President’s Commission for the Selection of Judges and served between 1977 and 1978. She served on the executive committee for Civil Rights Under Law for nine years, has been a member of the American Law Institute since 1977, and has been a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers since 1979.

DAMON J. KEITH (1922– ) Judge, Attorney

Damon Jerome Keith was appointed to the U.S. district court by President Lyndon B. Johnson and served from 1967 to 1977. In 1977, he began service as a judge for the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio. He assumed senior status in the court on May 1, 1995.

Born on July 4, 1922, in Detroit, Keith attended West Virginia State College and in 1943 received his A.B. Following graduation, he served in the army for three years. He returned to school to earn his LL.B. in 1949 from Howard University. In 1951, Keith took a job as an attorney for the Office of the Friend of the Court in Detroit and held that position from 1951 to 1955. He received an LL.M. from Wayne State University in 1956.

Keith worked for the Wayne County Board of Supervisors from 1958 to 1963 and went into private practice from 1964 to 1967 before being appointed a judge. He has been active in the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, a trustee in the Medical Corporation of Detroit, a member of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity, first vice president emeritus of the Detroit Chapter of the NAACP, a member of the management committee of the Detroit YMCA, a member of the Detroit Council of the Boy Scouts of America, a member of the Detroit Arts Commission, and vice president of the United Negro College Fund of Detroit. Keith is also a trustee of the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Cranbrook School.

Judge Keith has been honored with many accolades including being named among 100 Most Influential Black Americans by Ebony magazine, in 1971 and 1977. He received a citizen award from Michigan State University and was named a Spingarn Medalist in 1974. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Michigan, Howard University, Wayne State University, Michigan State University, and New York Law School.

WADE HAMPTON MCCREE JR. (1920–1987) Judge, Attorney

Wade Hampton McCree Jr. was solicitor general under President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. McCree had already led a distinguished career as a judge and lawyer by the time he reached that position. He died on August 30, 1987. McCree was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on July 3, 1920. He graduated in 1941 from Fisk University, earning his A.B. In 1944 he received his LL.B. from Harvard University. In 1948, he was admitted to the bar in Michigan.

McCree had a private law practice from 1948 to 1952. From 1952 to 1954 he was commissioner of the Michigan Workmen’s Compensation Commission. He was a circuit judge for Wayne County, Michigan, from 1954 until 1961. Then he was a judge for the U.S. District Court, Eastern District, in Michigan from 1961 to 1966. McCree had the honor of being the first African American federal judge in the state of Michigan. From 1966 to 1977 he served as a Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals judge. From 1981 until his death in 1987, he was a member of the faculty at the University of Michigan Law School. In 1984, the Wade H. McCree Jr. Professorship was established at the University of Michigan Law School, making it the first endowed chair at a major American law school to be named after an African American. McCree was honored with more than 30 honorary degrees in his lifetime including LL.D.s from Howard University, Harvard University, Boston University, Brandeis University, and Tuskegee Institute.

GABRIELLE KIRK MCDONALD (1942– ) Judge

McDonald was born on April 12, 1942, in St. Paul, Minnesota. She attended Hunter College and then, in 1966, graduated cum laude from the Howard University School of Law. McDonald worked for the NAACP until 1969 when she went into private practice in Houston, Texas, with her husband.

McDonald earned a reputation as one of the top litigators in the state and won several large settlements for her clients in civil rights cases. Her record attracted national attention and in 1979 President Jimmy Carter appointed her a federal district court judge. In 1988, she resigned from her position and went back into private practice. She also taught at several law schools.

In 1993, McDonald was the only U.S. citizen elected to the United Nations International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at the Hague, Netherlands. She was reelected in 1997 and became the presiding judge of the tribunal, a position she held until her resignation on November 17, 1999. In 2001, McDonald was honored by the American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession with its Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award.

THEODORE MCMILLIAN (1919–2006) Judge, Educator

Born on January 28, 1919, in St. Louis, Missouri, Theodore McMillian received his B.S. in 1941 from Lincoln University and, in 1949, earned his LL.B. from St. Louis University Law School. He served in the Signal Corps from 1942 to 1946.

McMillian has been a lecturer at St. Louis University Law School as well as a faculty member of Webster College. He became a circuit judge for the State of Missouri and served as an assistant circuit attorney for St. Louis, Missouri, from 1953 to 1956. From 1972 to 1978, he was a judge with the Missouri Court of Appeals. He became a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge for the Eighth Circuit on September 23, 1978.

Judge McMillian has been a member of the board of trustees for Blue Cross, and a member of the Danforth Foundation Advisory Council. He served on the Presidential Council of St. Louis University, and as a board chairman for Human Development Corporation between 1964 and 1977. He has also been a member of the National Legal Aid Advisory Board. He has been honored with an Alumni Merit Award from St. Louis University, an Award of Honor from the Lawyers Association in 1970, and a Man of the Year Award in 1970. He died on January 18, 2006, in St. Louis, Missouri.

CARMEL CARRINGTON MARR (1921– ) Attorney, Diplomat, State Government Official

Carmel Carrington Marr was born in Brooklyn on June 23, 1921, and received her B.A. in 1945 from Hunter College. She earned her J.D. from Columbia University Law School in 1948. As an experienced lawyer in international law, she was appointed by President Harry Truman to the position of legal advisor to the U.S. mission to the United Nations in 1953. She served that position until 1967, keeping in constant contact with missions from other parts of the world and serving on a number of key committees of the U.N. General Assembly.

Marr began her career in private practice from 1949 to 1953. After her position as legal advisor to the United Nations, she became the senior legal officer of the U.N. Secretariat from 1967 to 1968, and then left to become a member of the New York State Human Rights Appeal Board from 1968 to 1971. Between 1971 and 1986 she served as commissioner of the New York State Public Service Commission. She retired from that position, becoming an energy consultant from 1987 until 1990.

Marr was also the chairperson of the advisory council of the Gas Research Institute between 1979 and 1986, the chairperson of the U.S. Department of Transportation Technology Pipeline Safety Standards Commission from 1979 to 1985, and the chairperson of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners Gas Commission from 1984 to 1986. She became president of NARUC’s Great Lakes Conference of Public Utility Commission and was on the board of the National Arts Stabilization Fund.

Marr has been honored as an Outstanding Community Service by the Brooklyn Urban League and received accolades from the Gas Research Institute, New York State Public Service Commission, American Red Cross, National Council of Churches, and Mademoiselle magazine.

THURGOOD MARSHALL (1908–1993) Judge, Federal Government Official, Attorney, Civil Rights Activist

Thurgood Marshall’s long and illustrious career was capped by his 1967 nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he became the first African American to hold the position of Supreme Court Justice. He retired on June 27, 1991. Marshall died at the age of 84 on January 24, 1993. He was laid in state in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court of the United States on the same bier where Abraham Lincoln once rested. More than 20,000 mourners paid their respects.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 2, 1908, Marshall earned a B.A. from Lincoln University and hoped to become a dentist. He changed his mind, and instead went to Howard University Law School where he graduated in 1933 at the top of his class. He immediately entered private practice in Baltimore. In 1936, Marshall began what was to be a long and fruitful career with the NAACP, starting as an assistant special counsel, and eventually becoming director-counsel of the Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) until 1961. In 1938, as a national special counsel, he handled all cases involving the constitutional rights of African Americans. Then, in 1950, he was named director-counsel of the LDF.

In 1954, Marshall was the lead lawyer for the NAACP before the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. He also figured prominently in such important cases as Sweatt v. Painter and Smith v. Allwright. Of the 32 cases that he argued before the Supreme Court, Marshall won 29.

Marshall was also known for his lifelong support of rights for women. Constance Baker Motley commented that Marshall hired her for an NAACP counsel position when virtually every other employer had turned her down. He also encouraged her when he argued cases before the Supreme Court, and made certain he pointed out other African American women role models.

In 1961, Marshall became a federal circuit judge for the second circuit. In 1946, he was awarded the prestigious Spingarn Medal for his many achievements. He had over 20 honorary degrees to his credit including LL.D. honors in 1960 from the University of Liberia, in 1964 from the University of Michigan, and in 1968 from the University of Otago, in Dunedin, New Zealand. Marshall was also the representative for the White House Conference on Youth and Children, and a member of the National Bar Association. He was sent by President John F. Kennedy to be a personal representative to the independence ceremonies of Sierra Leone.

CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY (1921–2005) Federal Government Official, Judge, Civil Rights Activist, Attorney

Born on September 14, 1921, in New Haven, Connecticut, Constance Baker Motley became the first African American woman to become a federal judge. She was appointed in 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the U.S. District Court for Southern New York.

While still a law student at Columbia University, Motley began working with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. In 1946, she was awarded her LL.B. and began to work full-time with the NAACP, eventually becoming an associate counsel. During her 20-year career with the organization, Motley had argued nine successful NAACP cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and had participated in almost every important civil rights case that had passed through the courts since.

In 1964, Motley made a successful run for the New York State Senate. She became the first African American woman elected to that position. After only a year in the Senate, Motley ran for the position of Manhattan Borough President, emerging the victor by the unanimous final vote of the city council. She thus became the first woman to serve as a city borough president, and, therefore, also the first woman on the Board of Estimate.

Motley was appointed to the U.S. District Court in 1966. In 1982, she was named chief judge of the federal district court that covers Manhattan, the Bronx, and six counties north of New York City. In 1986 she was named senior U.S. district judge.

During her career, Motley received several awards for her contributions to the legal profession and for her role in the advancement of civil rights. She holds more than 20 honorary degrees from prestigious universities including Princeton and Howard. In 1993, Motley was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She died on September 28, 2005.

ELEANOR NORTON. SEEPOLITICS CHAPTER.

CHARLES J. OGLETREE JR. (1952– ) Lawyer

Charles J. Ogletree Jr. was born on December 31, 1952, in Merced, California, and attended Stanford University. In 1974, he received his B.A. and followed it the next year with his M.A. While at Stanford he became involved with the Black Power Movement. He edited a Black Panther newspaper and traveled to Africa and Cuba.

His attendance at Angela Davis’s trial first attracted him to a career in the law.

Ogletree graduated in 1978 from Harvard Law School and went to work as a public defender in Washington, D.C. He established a reputation as a top trial lawyer and taught at American University and Antioch Law School. In 1985, while in private practice, Ogletree became a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and helped the school develop its trial advocacy workshops.

Ogletree served as Anita Hill’s attorney during her testimony before the U.S. Senate concerning the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. In 1989, he became a full professor at Harvard, where he was named the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law in 1998.

BERNARD PARKS (1943– ) Police Chief

Bernard C. Parks was born in Beaumont, Texas, on December 7, 1943, but was raised in Los Angeles. After bouncing between jobs, Parks became a police officer in Los Angeles in 1965. Parks received his B.A. in 1973 from Pepperdine University and his M.A. in public administration in 1976 from the University of Southern California.

Parks steadily moved up the ladder at the Los Angeles Police Department. By 1988 he was the assistant police chief. The Los Angeles riots of 1992 forced incumbent police chief Darryl Gates from his position. Gates was accused by many of racism during his reign as police chief. An African American chief was picked to replace Gates.

The new chief, Willie Williams, clashed frequently with Parks. He demoted Parks in 1994. However, the City Council restored Parks’s salary. In 1996, Williams was removed as chief and the next year Parks became the head of the LAPD. Parks held the post until June 2002, retiring after he was denied a second five-year term by the Los Angeles Police Commission in April. During his tenure as chief, Parks attempted reform of the department, implementing changes meant to bring officers closer to their captains. During Parks’s term, though, the department was racked by the widely publicized Rampart scandal. The chief also suffered the loss of his grandaughter, Lori Gonzalez, in a gang-related shooting in June 2000.

Parks was elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 2003. His campaign for the position of mayor ended with a fourth-place finish in the 2005 primary election.

JAMES B. PARSONS (1911–1993) Judge

James Benton Parsons was born August 13, 1991, in Kansas City, Missouri. He graduated in 1934 from the James Milliken University and Conservatory of Music and began to teach at Lincoln University. He later taught in Greensboro, North Carolina, until he joined the U.S. Navy in 1942. After World War II, he received an M.A. in political science and a J.D. from the University of Chicago.

Parsons went into private practice and taught constitutional law at the John Marshall Law School. He served as assistant U.S. district attorney for nine years until he became a judge of the Cook County Superior Court. He was appointed a U.S. district court judge in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. He became the first African American to sit as a federal judge in the continental United States. In 1975, Parsons was named chief judge of the court.

He retired in 1992 after many tributes from other African American judges. Parsons died on June 19, 1993, in Chicago.

SPOTTSWOOD ROBINSON (1916–1998) Attorney, Judge

Spottswood William Robinson III was born July 26, 1916, in Richmond, Virginia. He received his B.A. in 1936 from Virginia Union University and his LL.B. in 1939 from Howard University Law School. He graduated magna cum laude from Howard.

Robinson has had a long career in private and public practice. He was an attorney in Richmond until 1960. However, during that time he also taught at the Howard University Law School from 1945 until 1964. He was dean of the school of law from 1960 to 1964. Robinson gained notoriety during the period for his work with the NAACP. He worked alongside Thurgood Marshall for the Legal Defense and Educational Fund from 1948 to 1950. From 1951 to 1960 he was the regional counsel for the NAACP in the southeast.

In 1964, President Johnson appointed Robinson as a federal circuit court judge in Washington, D.C. In 1966, Robinson was promoted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He also served on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission from 1961 to 1963.

Robinson died on October 11, 1998, in Richmond, Virginia.

GEORGE RUFFIN (1834–1886) Judge, Attorney, Civil Rights Activist

George L. Ruffin was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1834, the first son of free African Americans. In 1853, the family moved to Boston. Ruffin graduated from Chapman Hall school and joined with the Republican Party. He moved for a short while to Liverpool, England, after becoming disillusioned by the Dred Scott decision. Returning to Boston, Ruffin worked as a barber. He wrote a review for the Anglo-African newspaper in 1863 and attended the National Negro Convention in 1864.

Ruffin also began to read law with a local firm. He graduated in 1869 from Harvard Law School, becoming the first African American to earn an LL.B. from Harvard and, perhaps, the first to graduate from a university law school in the United States. He joined the firm of Harvey Jewell, and then won a seat on the Massachusetts legislature in 1869, becoming the second African American to serve in that body.

Ruffin became known as an exceptional speaker and debater as he focused his attention to the problems in the South. In 1876 and 1877, he won election to the Boston Common Council. He presided over the Negro Convention of New Orleans in 1872. Frederick Douglass was a friend of Ruffin’s, and Ruffin was asked to contribute to the introduction to the 1881 revision of The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Ruffin was appointed in November 1883 as judge of a municipal court in Charlestown. He became the first African American judge in Massachusetts. In 1883, he was made consul resident for the Dominican Republic in Boston. Ruffin’s other activities included being named president of the Wendell Phillips Club of Boston, member and president of the Banneker Literary Club of Boston, and superintendent and officer of the Twelfth Baptist Church of Boston. Ruffin died of Bright’s disease on November 20, 1886.

KURT L. SCHMOKE. SEEPOLITICS CHAPTER.

DRED SCOTT. SEEAFRICANS IN AMERICA CHAPTER.

ROBERT H. TERRELL (1857–1925) Educator, Judge, Attorney

Robert H. Terrell was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, on November 27, 1857. He worked in a dining hall to pay for his classes at Harvard, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1884. He went to work in the Washington, D.C., public schools, and also attended Howard University Law School, earning his LL.B. in 1889 and his LL.M. in 1893. In 1889, he went to work as the chief clerk in the office of the auditor of the U.S. Treasury Department.

Terrell was involved in the private practice of law from 1892 to 1898, until he became a teacher, and later became principal at the M Street High School. He was elected to the Board of Trade in the 1890s. In 1901, he was appointed as a justice of the peace in Washington, D.C. Similar to many African Americans of his day, Terrell was torn between his strongly held civil rights beliefs and Booker T. Washington’s conservative ideas. Through Washington’s influence, Terrell was nominated by President William H. Taft for the position of judge of the Municipal Court of the District of Columbia in 1910. Despite racial protests in the Senate, Terrell signed the appointment and held the position until his death on December 20, 1925. Terrell suffered two strokes and battled asthma while on the court.

CLARENCE THOMAS (1948– ) Attorney, Supreme Court Justice

Thomas was born June 23, 1948, in Pin Point, Georgia. As a youth, Thomas lived with his maternal grandparents in Savannah. While his grandfather had little education, he was determined that Thomas would go to school and make something of himself. He attended various Catholic schools. He intended to enter the priesthood, but left when he encountered a racist seminarian.

Thomas earned his B.A. from Holy Cross College. He was accepted into Yale Law School in 1971 after Yale had adopted an affirmative action program. In 1974, he earned his J.D. After graduating, Thomas became an assistant attorney general for the state of Missouri. Thomas worked briefly at Monsanto Company in St. Louis, specializing in pesticide, fungicide, and rodenticide law. He also worked as a legal assistant for Senator John C. Danforth.

From 1981 to 1982, Thomas was an assistant secretary for civil rights with the Department of Education, then moved on to chair the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) until 1990. His time there was controversial, as he was not allied with either liberals or civil rights leaders, and he did not feel comfortable with the white conservative hierarchy.

After Robert H. Bork resigned his Circuit Court position because he had been rejected for a place on the U.S. Supreme Court, Thomas was appointed to the post. He served there until he was made a justice on the Supreme Court in 1991. Thomas’s nomination hearings were marred by accusations of sexual harassment levied against him by former EEOC employee Anita Hill.

Hill became a household name when she came forward with her allegations. The Senate was divided by Hill’s testimony. Though Thomas denied the charges and many of his former coworkers testified for him, the case became highly politicized. Thomas was nominated by a vote of 52–48, one of the closest margins in Supreme Court history.

Thomas has gone on to carve out a prominent role as one of the most conservative justices on the Court. Together with Justice Antonin Scalia, Thomas forms the right-wing backbone of the Court. In his tenure Thomas has presented strong opinions against affirmative action and desegregation. He also supports limiting the powers of the federal government. In 1992, Thomas was one of ten people to receive the Horatio Alger Award. However, he has consistently been criticized by African American lawyers and judges for his conservative stances. In 1998, he rebuffed his critics at a speech before the National Bar Association.

EVELYN WILLIAMS (c.1922– ) Attorney

Williams was born in North Carolina but grew up in Queens, New York, in a close-knit family. After graduating from Brooklyn College, she became a social worker for New York City. Shaken by the poverty she encountered and hoping to take a more active role in helping her community, Williams became a juvenile probation officer, but that also offered little satisfaction.

In the late 1950s, Williams graduated from law school as one of two African Americans in her class. By 1960, she was active in defending those accused of crimes who had little means for expensive legal representation. She also helped raise a niece who eventually became involved with the Black Liberation Army in the early 1970s.

For several years Williams—then working with the New York University Urban Affairs and Poverty Law Program—served as the attorney for her niece, Assata Shakur and her co-defendants against a series of legal charges involving a shootout with police. The case, which included the mysterious death of one of Williams’s fellow attorneys, was chronicled in her 1993 autobiography Inadmissable Evidence: The Story of the African-American Trial Lawyer Who Defended the Black Liberation Army.

Williams’s high-profile defense of Shakur would cost her in more ways than she had imagined. During the 1980s, Williams again entered private practice but became the target of an unsuccessful FBI sting operation. By 1989, she had joined the firm of Stevens, Hinds & White in New York City.

AFRICAN AMERICAN FEDERAL JUDGES BY YEAR OF APPOINTMENT

APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

1937: William H. Hastie* (District Court, Virgin Islands)

1939: Harnian E. Moore* (District Court, Virgin Islands)

APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT HARRY S. TRUMAN

1945: Irvin C. Mollison* (U.S. Customs Court)

1949: William H. Hastie* (Court of Appeals, Third Circuit)

1949: Harnian E. Moore (a)* (District Court, Virgin Islands)

APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

1957: Scovel Richardson* (U.S. Customs Court)

1958: Walter Gordon* (District Court, Virgin Islands)

APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

1961: James B. Parsons* (Senior Judge, District Court, Illinois)

1961: Wade M. McCree* (District Court, Michigan)

1961: Thurgood Marshall* (Court of Appeals, Second Circuit)

APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON

1964: Spottswood Robinson* (District Court, District of Columbia)

1964: A. Leon Higginbotham* (District Court, Pennsylvania)

1965: William B. Bryant* (Senior Judge, District Court, District of Columbia)

1966: Wade H. McCree* (Court of Appeals, Sixth Court)

1966: James L. Watson (U.S. Customs Court)

1966: Constance B. Motley* (Senior Judge, District Court, New York)

1966: Spottswood Robinson* (Senior Judge, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit)

1966: Aubrey E. Robinson* (Senior Judge, District Court, District of Columbia)

1967: Damon Keith** (District Court, Michigan)

1967: Thurgood Marshall* (Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court)

1967: Joseph C. Waddy* (District Court, District of Columbia)

APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON

1969: Almeric Christian* (District Court, Virgin Islands)

1969: David W. Williams* (Senior Judge, District Court, California)

1969: Barrington D. Parker Sr.* (Senior Judge, District Court, District of Columbia)

1971: Lawrence W. Pierce** (District Court, New York)

1971: Clifford Scott Green (Senior Judge, District Court, Pennsylvania)

1972: Robert L. Carter (Senior Judge, District Court, New York)

1972: Robert M. Duncan** (Military Court of Appeals)

1974: Robert M. Duncan** (District Court, Ohio)

APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT GERALD R. FORD

1974: Henry Bramwell (Senior Judge, District Court, New York)

1976: George N. Leighton** (Senior Judge, District Court, Illinois)

1976: Matthew J. Perry** (Military Court of Appeals)

1976: Cecil F. Poole* (District Court, California)

APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER

1978: Almeric Christian (a)* (Chief Judge, District Court, Virgin Islands)

1978: U.W. Clemon (Chief Judge, District Court, Alabama)

1978: Robert F. Collins** (District Court, Louisiana)

1978: Julian A. Cook Jr. (Senior Judge, District Court, Michigan)

1978: Damon J. Keith (Senior Judge, Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit)

1978: A. Leon Higginbotham* (Senior Judge, Court of Appeals, Third Circuit)

1978: Mary Johnson Lowe* (Senior Judge, District Court, New York)

1978: Theodore McMillian* (Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit)

1978: David S. Nelson* (Senior Judge, District Court, Massachusetts)

1978: Paul A. Simmons (Senior Judge, District Court, Pennsylvania)

1978: Jack E. Tanner* (Senior Judge, District Court, Washington)

1979: Harry T. Edwards (Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit)

1979: J. Jerome Farris (Senior Judge, Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit)

1979: Joseph W. Hatchett** (Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit)

1979: Terry J. Hatter (District Court, California)

1979: Joseph C. Howard* (Senior Judge, District Court, Maryland)

1979: Benjamin T. Gibson** (Senior Judge, District Court, Michigan)

1979: James T. Giles (District Court, Pennsylvania)

1979: Nathaniel R. Jones** (Senior Judge, Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit)

1979: Amalya L. Kearse (Court of Appeals, Second Circuit)

1979: Gabrielle Kirk McDonald** (District Court, Texas)

1979: John Garrett Penn (Senior Judge, District Court, District of Columbia)

1979: Cecil F. Poole* (Senior Judge, Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit)

1979: Matthew J. Perry (Senior Judge, District Court, South Carolina)

1979: Myron H. Thompson (District Court, Alabama)

1979: Anne E. Thompson (Senior Judge, District Court, New Jersey)

1979: Odell Horton* (Senior Judge, District Court, Tennessee)

1979: Anna Diggs Taylor (Senior Judge, District Court, Michigan)

1979: Horace T. Ward (Senior Judge, District Court, Georgia)

1979: Alcee L. Hastings*** (District Court, Florida)

1980: Clyde S. Cahill Jr. (Senior Judge, District Court, Missouri)

1980: Richard C. Erwin (Senior Judge, District Court, North Carolina)

1980: Thelton E. Henderson (Senior Judge, District Court, California)

1980: George Howard Jr. (District Court, Arkansas)

1980: Earl B. Gilliam* (Senior Judge, District Court, California)

1980: Norma Holloway Johnson (Senior Judge, District Court, District of Columbia)

1980: Consuela B. Marshall (Chief Judge, District Court, California)

1980: George White (Senior Judge, District Court, Ohio)

APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN

1981: Lawrence W. Pierce** (Senior Judge, Court of Appeals, Second Circuit)

1982: Reginald Gibson (U.S. Court of Claims)

1984: John R. Hargrove* (Senior Judge, District Court, Maryland)

1984: Henry Wingate (District Court, Mississippi)

1985: Ann Williams** (District Court, Illinois)

1986: James Spencer (District Court, Virginia)

1987: Kenneth Hoyt (District Court, Texas)

1988: Herbert Hutton (District Court, Pennsylvania)

APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT GEORGE H. W. BUSH

1990: Clarence Thomas** (Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit)

1990: James Ware (District Court, California)

1991: Saundra Brown Armstrong (District Court, California)

1991: Fernando J. Giatan (District Court, Missouri)

1991: Donald L. Graham (District Court, Florida)

1991: Sterling Johnson (District Court, New York)

1991: J. Curtis Joyner (District Court, Pennsylvania)

1991: Timothy K. Lewis** (District Court, Pennsylvania)

1991: Joe B. McDade (Chief Judge, District Court, Illinois)

1991: Clarence Thomas (Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court)

1992: Garland E. Burrell Jr. (District Court, California)

1992: Carol Jackson (District Court, Missouri)

1992: Timothy K. Lewis** (Court of Appeals, Third Circuit)

APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON

1993: Henry Lee Adams (District Court, Florida)

1993: Wilkie Ferguson (District Court, Florida)

1993: Raymond Jackson (District Court, Virginia)

1993: Gary Lancaster (District Court, Pennsylvania)

1993: Reginald Lindsay (District Court, Massachusetts)

1993: Charles Shaw (District Court, Missouri)

1994: Deborah Batts (District Court, New York)

1994: Franklin Burgess (District Court, Washington)

1994: James Beaty Jr. (District Court, North Carolina)

1994: David Coar (District Court, Illinois)

1994: Audrey Collins (District Court, California)

1994: Clarence Cooper (District Court, Georgia)

1994: Michael Davis (District Court, Minnesota)

1994: Raymond Finch (District Court, Virgin Islands)

1994: Vanessa Gilmore (District Court, Texas)

1994: A. Haggerty (District Court, Oregon)

1994: Denise Page Hood (District Court, Michigan)

1994: Napoleon Jones Jr. (District Court, California)

1994: Okla Jones II (District Court, Louisiana)

1994: Blanche Manning (District Court, Illinois)

1994: Theodore McKee (Court of Appeals, Third Circuit)

1994: Vicki Miles-LaGrange (District Court, Oklahoma)

1994: Solomon Oliver Jr. (District Court, Ohio)

1994: Barrington Parker Jr.** (District Court, New York)

1994: Judith Rogers (Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit)

1994: W. Louis Sands (Chief Judge, District Court, Georgia)

1994: Carl Stewart (Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit)

1994: Emmet Sullivan (District Court, District of Columbia)

1994: Alvin W. Thompson (District Court, Connecticut)

1994: William Walls (District Court, New Jersey)

1994: Alexander Williams (District Court, Maryland)

1995: R. Guy Cole (Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit)

1995: Curtis Collier (District Court, Tennessee)

1995: Wiley Daniel (District Court, Colorado)

1995: Andre Davis (District Court, Maryland)

1995: Bernice B. Donald (District Court, Tennessee)

1996: Charles N. Clevert Jr. (District Court, Wisconsin)

1996: Joseph A. Greenaway Jr. (District Court, New Jersey)

1997: Eric L. Clay (Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit)

1997: Algenon L. Marbley (District Court, Ohio)

1997: Martin J. Jenkins (District Court, California)

1997: Henry H. Kennedy Jr. (District Court, District of Columbia)

1998: Gregory Sleet (District Court, Delaware)

1998: Ivan L.R. Lemelle (District Court, Louisiana)

1998: Sam A. Lindsay (District Court, Texas)

1998: Johnnie B. Rawlinson (District Court, Nevada)

1998: Margaret Seymour (District Court, South Carolina)

1998: Richard Roberts (District Court, District of Columbia)

1998: Gerald Bruce Lee (District Court, Virginia)

1998: Lynn Bush (Court of Federal Claims)

1998: Stephan P. Mickle (District Court, Florida)

1998: Victoria Roberts (District Court, Michigan)

1998: Raner Collins (District Court, Arizona)

1998: Ralph Tyson (District Court, Louisiana)

1999: William J. Haynes Jr. (District Court, Tennessee)

1999: William Hibbler (District Court, Illinois)

1999: Ann Williams (Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit)

1999: Charles R. Wilson (Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit)

2000: George B. Daniels (District Court, New York)

2000: Phyllis J. Hamilton (District Court, California)

2000: Laura Swain (District Court, New York)

2000: Petrese B. Tucker (District Court, Pennsylvania)

2001: Roger L. Gregory (Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit)

APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

2001: Barrington Parker Jr. (Court of Appeals, Second Circuit)

2001: Julie A. Robinson (District Court, Kansas)

2001: Reggie B. Walton (District Court, District of Columbia)

2002: Percy Anderson (District Court, California)

2002: Legrome D. Davis (District Court, Pennsylvania) (a) Reappointment * Deceased ** No longer serving *** Impeached and removed from the court