Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Spring 2007
Encouraging Black Lawyers
Looking back forty years, the need for black lawyers, particularly in the South, was acute. In Mississippi, in 1964, there were only “three black lawyers to serve a black population of about 800,000,” as the Winter 1974 issue of the Corporation’s newsletter, the Carnegie Quarterly, documents.3 The situation was not much better in other southern states, including Alabama and Georgia, which in 1969 had 20 and 34 black lawyers, respectively. The small number of African Americans practicing law in southern states stems from numerous factors, including a lack of black law schools as well as inadequate education and a lack of financial resources that prevented African Americans from entering and remaining in law school.
The Carnegie Quarterly article reviews a five-year period of Corporation funding totaling $952,873 and additional funding from nearly 40 other foundations, including the Ford Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Field Foundation, Norman Fund, New World Foundation, Fleischmann Foundation and The Henry Ford II Fund that collectively addressed the need to recruit, retain and financially aid black students and their law schools. The programs that were supported included scholarship aid for students attending law school and summer institutes that provided the students with an opportunity to gain direct experience working with civil rights groups and civil rights lawyers. Specifically, foundation funding amounted to more than $1.6 million to the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council (LSCRRU) and nearly $3.8 million to the Legal Defense Fund (formerly the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund) and its affiliate, The Earl Warren Legal Training Program, Inc. Funding included scholarship support, and of the 13 blacks enrolled in the University of Virginia School of Law in 1969, all but one were on scholarships awarded by the Earl Warren Program. Many of the students struggled, and most of the members of the first cohort were on probation at one point in their studies. To address this situation, programs provided black tutors and role models to help students improve their study skills and stay in school. By the spring of 1974—a scant five years after funding had begun—nearly 300 black students had graduated from law schools in the South and another 170 black students were completing their first year at southern law schools.
Many problems remained after this initial funding period, including the need to help young black lawyers build self-confidence and hone skills that would enable them to litigate for school desegregation, fair employment and other civil rights as well as to serve as publicly elected officials.
“Comprehensive support for each and every step that allowed young black lawyers to succeed and brought legal representation to all these communities across the South was the key to the unusual funding strategy and its success,” says Eli N. Evans, president emeritus of The Charles H. Revson Foundation, who was a program officer of Carnegie Corporation from 1967 to 1977.
Registering the fact that progress was being made, the 1974 Carnegie Quarterly article, though concluding with a warning, also sounded a hopeful note: “To underestimate the problems that lie ahead in assuring blacks access to justice in the South would be to deny history. Yet if the dedication and the ability of the black lawyer are any measure of what lies ahead, a new history is in the making.”
Many of the young lawyers supported by the programs meant to advance their chances of success went on to have distinguished careers, including current Congressmen Mel Watt (D-North Carolina) and Sanford D. Bishop (D-Georgia),4 who was profiled in the Carnegie Quarterly article. An Earl Warren fellow, Bishop opted to establish a law practice in Columbus, Georgia, because, as the article pointed out, “his commitment, combined with the experience of working with the day-to-day legal problems of poverty-stricken clients at a neighborhood law office while at Emory [University], made him realize that the [Legal Defense Fund]—and the South—needed black lawyers in areas where few or none had previously practiced to press home the civil rights victories of the 1960s.”
3The Carnegie Quarterly was succeeded by the Carnegie Reporter in 2000.
4 From 1977 to 1990, Bishop served in the Georgia House of Representatives; from 1990-1992, he served in the Georgia State Senate and, since then, he has been serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. In January 2007 Bishop, who is a member of the House Committee on Appropriations, was appointed to three subcommittees: Defense; Agriculture and Military Construction/Veterans Affairs.