Black Women in Law: Barriers and Careers, 1900–1970

Introduction

Black women attempting to enter careers in law during the period from 1900 through 1970 faced a variety of unique challenges. During this era, many women of all races began to question their role and place in society. It was also during this time that civil rights campaigns were beginning to flourish, and African-American women faced the prospect of not only being a minority as women, but also being a minority because of their skin color and ethnic heritage.

African-American women attempting to pursue careers during this time rarely had the opportunity to hold leadership positions — a limitation common to women of any race. Another challenge facing Black women was the lack of adequate representation, influence, and emphasis in the workforce. The lack of attention to Black women's careers is even evident in textual references and historical records; the majority of work discussing the civil rights era and the early twentieth century focuses primarily on the experience of white middle-class women, not African-American women. There is some discussion related to the push for African-Americans as a whole to receive equal representation, and from this we can extract some conclusions related to the plight of Black women attempting to establish careers in these difficult-to-penetrate fields.

The field of law proved especially difficult for Black women to enter and build a successful career in. Until this period — and even today — a majority of individuals working in this field are white, middle-class men. Part of establishing an effective and long-term career involves building networks and associating with like-minded peers who share similar backgrounds and interests. This was perhaps the biggest obstacle Black women in the legal field had to overcome.

Challenges Facing Black Women in the Legal Profession

Black women during the era from 1900 to 1970 faced not only the challenge of finding placement in white professional society, but also the challenge of being women in a time of deep inequality and discrimination. Being a Black woman during the early twentieth century naturally predisposed an individual to the harsh realities of discrimination and unfavorable outcomes.

Black women attempting to enter the professional world of law faced many obstacles during this period, including the pervasive assumption that African-American women were not "intellectuals." Even a well-to-do, middle-class white woman would have had difficulty during early twentieth-century American history convincing her colleagues in the legal profession of her intellectual standing. A majority of the jobs available to women during this period focused on "traditional" and stereotypical women's roles; thus, a Black woman would have found it far easier to acquire a position as an aide or secretary than as a legal assistant or attorney.

Additionally, Black women's history from an academic standpoint has, according to some scholars, been effectively erased. According to Minnich, "the disciplinary canon in Western knowledge production systematically excludes women, who should be at its center." It is very difficult to find documentation of the plight of women during this time frame, as the majority of their history was simply not recorded formally in textbooks or literature.

As noted above, the field of law has been particularly exclusionary for Black women. Among the challenges they faced was difficulty in attaining promotion — a significant and critical event in any legal career. Other fields in which Black women struggled include academia, where obtaining academic tenure was extraordinarily difficult, despite tenure being crucial to the success and longevity of any professional career in higher education.

Exclusion from Academic and Professional Networks

In the world of academia, tenure brings with it "associated power and prestige," making it one of the most important goals for faculty in legal academia and other fields. One avenue through which Black women could enter the legal field was via education — women could aspire to become professors of politics or law — but as evidenced by the literature, they faced enormous difficulty maintaining prestige without the ability to acquire tenure.

Part of the problem lay in the fact that legal institutions were — and remain — male-dominated and predominantly white. The legal profession operated somewhat like an "old boy's school," an environment in which even the most capable women would struggle to be accepted. Building social networks was virtually impossible for a young Black woman entering a field where she was likely regarded as an outsider.

African-American women have also been cited as suffering from "a restricted communication network," which impacts their self-confidence, efficiency, and productivity. Black women interviewed across many professions have stated that they feel most comfortable among members of their own community — people they can relate to and lean on for support. It would be very difficult for a Black woman in a legal executive role to build a rapport with an upper-class white male colleague in the same field. Not impossible, but far from straightforward.

Conclusion

Throughout history, women have struggled to assert and maintain their legal rights and career opportunities in American society. This is even truer for the Black woman of the early twentieth century, who faced double discrimination in occupational fields such as law — discrimination both as a woman and as a racial minority.

Black women attempting to establish careers in law during this period confronted stereotypical assumptions that they were intellectually inferior to men and even to other women. During the civil rights movement, some progress was made for women in general, including the passage of legislation prohibiting discrimination and requiring equal wages for men and women. Many Black women attempting to establish careers in law, however, still faced discrimination. As late as the 1930s, women still made up less than two percent of all American lawyers and judges. Other stereotypically male fields, such as engineering, were equally challenging for women to enter.

The qualitative research that has been conducted on high-achieving African-American women reveals that success in demanding fields like law was driven by persistence, intrinsic motivation, and community solidarity. The near-absence of Black women from formal historical records makes the recovery and documentation of their experiences all the more important. Recognizing the barriers they overcame — and the structural inequities that persisted — remains essential to understanding the full history of the American legal profession.

References

Benjamin, Lois H. Black Women in the Academy: Promises and Perils. University Press of Florida, 1997.

Coquery-Vidrovitch, C., and B. Raps. African Woman: A Modern History. Boulder: Westview Press, 1997.

Fassinger, Ruth E., J. Johnson, Sonja Linn, J. Prosser, B. Richie, and S. Robinson. "Persistence, Connection, and Passion: A Qualitative Study of the Career Development of Highly Achieving African-American Black and White Women." Journal of Counseling Psychology, Vol. 44, 1997.

Hooks, Bell. Yearning. Boston: South End Press, 1990.

Minnich, Elizabeth K. Transforming Knowledge. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.