Three part question concerning Black Lawyers, Judges, and Jurors.
Prior to the Civil Rights Movement Blacks faced segregation and prejudice in the U.S. Especially in the segregated South. But, prejudice existed everywhere. I’ve studied the Civil Rights Movement informally since taking a English Lit class in college. We read a lot of essays and other writings from people involved in the Civil Rights Movement, studied Dr. King, Thurgood Marshall etc. I’ve never heard much about the history of Black lawyers and Judges. The horror stories of Blacks receiving unfair treatment in White courts is well documented.
So, 15% of the lynchings occurred outside the South. Even in my own childhood educated Blacks were called uppity and they didn’t know their place. It was a dangerous time for educated Blacks in the U.S.
I found an article listing ten famous Black Law Schools. Howard University being the one I already knew.
When were Black Lawyers first admitted to the Bar? 1. Segregated South 2. Everywhere else? Could they practice Civil and Criminal law?
Did a separate Court system exist with black judges & juries for cases that only involved Blacks? 1. Segregated South 2. Everywhere else?
When were blacks allowed on juries that included whites? 1. Segregated South 2. Everywhere else?
When were Black judges allowed to handle criminal trials with white defendants? 1. Segregated South 2. Everywhere else?
That had to be a huge event. A Black man sending a white person to prison or even hanging? I imagine the Klan got pretty worked up over that.
We’ve come a long, long way since the Civil Rights Movement.
What about the great Shambala Green played in many episodes of Law & Order by Lorraine Toussaint? Sophina Brown was a regular on Shark playing a lawyer. Those are just the first two that come to mind.
First black juror–1860; see here(warning: PDF file) for a good history of racial exclusion and discrimination on juries.
First black lawyer–Macon Allen of Maine, 1844; see here for a list by state. Note that the Southern bars integrated during Reconstruction, but this window shut a few years later and would not be reopened until modern times.
Macon Allen also served as a justice of the peace. The first African American state or municipal judge appears to have been George L. Ruffin, in Boston in 1883. The first African American federal judge was William Hastie, appointed by President Truman in 1946.
Practically every ensemble lawyer/cop show of the last twenty years features at least one black female attorney: Law and Order (and its spinoffs, Criminal Intent, SVU, Los Angeles, and UK), Boston Legal, Ally McBeal, the Practice, NYPD Blue, Lie to Me, Raising the Bar, the Good Wife, The Defenders, Family Law, Damages, the Closer, Harry’s Law, Southland, Judging Amy, and of course Night Court.
And how could you forgot the great Claire Huxtable from the Cosby Show?
Historically jurors were drawn exclusively from the electoral role (though women were often excluded long after getting the vote). This would’ve made black jurors a virtual impossibility in the South before the 1960s. While Blacks were allowed to practice law even in the Deep South they didn’t exactly get treated equally with their white colleauges. George Wallace was elected a judge in 1953 he was considered quite liberal and fair because among other things he addressed Black lawyers as “Mr (or Miss) Lastname” just like White lawyers were instead of calling them by their first names (or worse).
He was the first African American Appellate appointment, in 1949, but he had been appointed as District Judge for the Virgin Islands in 1936. And before him, Robert H. Terrell had been appointed judge of the DC municipal court.
Ah, I got his roles confused–he was federal judge in the Virgin Islands in the 1930’s, and governor in the 1940’s. So credit for the first appointment of a black man to the federal bench goes to FDR.
I’m curious about this myself. The clerk, Mac, was a black guy (who replaced a white woman in the role), the DA was always Dan Fielding (played by John Laroquette) and the defense attorney was played by at least two white women that I recall, the latter being Markie Post.
There was an It’s a Wonderful Life type episode in which Harry Stone is invisibly guided by his assigned angel (played by Mel Tormé) through Night Court had Harry never become a judge. In it, Dan is the corrupt judge, Roz (normally the black female bailiff) is an arrested protester, Bull is Deputy Mayor of New York and Mac was the district attorney (though the stress was wrecking havoc with his health and personal life). But for this one-off fantasy episode, I can’t recall a black lawyer character.
ISTR (but can’t back it up) that in the first few episodes of the first season there was a black defense lawyer who hung around the court looking to pick up random clients. That character was phased out when they brought in a public defender as a regular character.
In real life, the Mound City Bar Association in St. Louis was the first black bar association west of the Mississippi. It was founded in 1922.
[moderating] Freddy the Pig, I’ve edited your post above to add a little warning after the link to the PDF file. A lot of people have problems with Adobe Reader, and it’s considered courteous to warn readers before sending them off to PDF land.
[/moderating]
The previous defense attorney was played by Ellen Foley, who amusingly enough, was the female vocalist on the album version of Meatloaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”. I have no idea if they ever referred to this in the show, but they should have.
I don’t have James McPherson’s book on he Civil war available but he does mention a black lawyer arguing a case before the SCOTUS and Chief Justice Roger Taney who several years earlier had written in the Dred Scott case that “negroes didn’t have any rights that a white man had to respect”. This must have been late 1864/early 1865.
