Lessons From Successful African American Lawyers

"Emancipation is an important and impressive work; one cannot read it without being inspired by the legal acumen, creativity, and resiliency these pioneer lawyers displayed. . . . It should be read by everyone interested in understanding the road African-Americans have traveled and the challenges that lie ahead."—From the Foreword, by Justice Thurgood Marshall

The reflections on their lives in law of pioneer black women lawyers

You Don't Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gendered Racism highlights how race and gender create barriers to recruitment, professional development, and advancement to partnership for black women in elite corporate law firms.

“A wonderful excavation of the first era of civil rights lawyering.”—Randall L. Kennedy, author of The Persistence of the Color Line “Ken Mack brings to this monumental work not only a profound understanding of law, biography, history and racial relations but also an engaging narrative style that brings each of his subjects dynamically alive.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals Representing the Race tells the story of an enduring paradox of American race relations through the prism of a collective biography of African American lawyers who worked in the era of segregation. Practicing the law and seeking justice for diverse clients, they confronted a tension between their racial identity as black men and women and their professional identity as lawyers. Both blacks and whites demanded that these attorneys stand apart from their racial community as members of the legal fraternity. Yet, at the same time, they were expected to be “authentic”—that is, in sympathy with the black masses. This conundrum, as Kenneth W. Mack shows, continues to reverberate through American politics today. Mack reorients what we thought we knew about famous figures such as Thurgood Marshall, who rose to prominence by convincing local blacks and prominent whites that he was—as nearly as possible—one of them. But he also introduces a little-known cast of characters to the American racial narrative. These include Loren Miller, the biracial Los Angeles lawyer who, after learning in college that he was black, became a Marxist critic of his fellow black attorneys and ultimately a leading civil rights advocate; and Pauli Murray, a black woman who seemed neither black nor white, neither man nor woman, who helped invent sex discrimination as a category of law. The stories of these lawyers pose the unsettling question: what, ultimately, does it mean to “represent” a minority group in the give-and-take of American law and politics?

This book had its beginnings in a simple question: How have some African-American attorneys, recently admitted to the bar, successfully navigated what research suggests is a very precarious pipeline to the legal profession? The response to this question entailed a journey that spanned some three years, over fifty informants, and a dozen or so researchers and scholars who study the intersections of education, race, and efforts to achieve social equity. The resulting work generalizes from the stories collected and constructs a substantive theory of success built around a phenomenon called "working recognition." This concept describes both the recognition experienced in various forms by our study's participants and the recognition they transformed into strategic activities aimed at overcoming academic, economic, and social obstacles encountered in their personal pipelines. We found that it was through such activity that they ultimately attained recognition as lawyers and entered the profession of law. As a way of situating the study within scholarship in higher and legal education, the book further presents essays from noted scholars who respond to the study's thematic findings comparing and contrasting them to related research and practices. Finally, we consider the policy implications that derive from our extant project, particularly policies that relate to future pipeline interventions. "This is an engaging and well-written book that uses analysis of in-depth interviews to tell the stories not only of African Americans entering the legal profession, but also the story of the significant and important role of HBCUs in educating the current generation of black lawyers. It is a must read for anyone doubting the relevance of the HBCU today."-- Kurt l. Schmoke, Dean, Howard University School of Law "A must read for anyone interested in understanding the very different experiences faced by African-American law students when compared with their white peers. It should be required reading for all law school Deans and University Presidents who should then seek to implement the very thoughtful suggestions discussed by Evensen and Pratt thereby moving law schools in the direction of being inclusive learning environments for all students."-- Dorothy Brown, Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law "Evensen and Pratt's illuminating study tells the stories that all lawyers need to hear. Their chronicles of young African Americans who navigate nearly insurmountable challenges to join our profession provide convincing evidence for the authors' theory of intervention and the necessity of pipeline programs. With its combination of interviews and essays, this is an essential work for anyone who is committed to improving the racial diversity of the legal profession."-- Phoebe Haddon, Dean, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law

This book gives an intimate look into the history of an African American National Historic Site that was located in Bordentown, New Jersey. It was known by many names: Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth; M.T.I.S.; or the Tuskegee of the North. Most commonly, however, it was called just the Bordentown School. Bordentown was founded in 1886 by an ex-slave, Walter Allen Simpson Rice. Afer serving in the Civil War, Rice came north and became affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E.). Seeing great promise in him, the church sent him to seminary to become a minister. Rice dreamed of uplifting his people but had limited resources with which to make his dreams a reality. However, he did have great faith in God, and his faith inspired him to start a boarding school. With only eight colored students he began his school in an old frame house. He did not live to see this school become one of the nest institutions of learning for colored high-school youth in the northeast. However, Reverend Rice and the principals who followed him have legacy behind a legacy which has invaluable lessons and great potential for developing educational prescriptions which will, at their foundation, give all black students a culturally affirming, culturally relevant education. This book clearly states that no matter how complicated and technologically sophisticated our Society becomes, the Bordentown Schools philosophy, policies, and practices can still be a model which can be adapted for Reclaiming African American Students in the 21st Century.