1943 August 27

American Bar Association Admits First African-American in Three Decades

 

James S. Watson, a Judge on the New York City Municipal Court, on this day became the first African-American admitted as a member of the American Bar Association in several decades.

There had previously been at least one African-American member, who was expelled in March 1912. It is not clear when the ABA became an all-white organization as a matter of official policy.

Watson’s membership was made possible only because of a rule change that allowed the ABA to disregard two negative votes on the Board of Governors. Watson had been elected municipal judge in 1930, and along with another person became the first African-American judges in the state of New York.

When Watson was admitted to the ABA, however, another African-American candidate, Francis S. Rivers, was rejected without explanation. Arthur Garfield Hays, Co-General Counsel of the ACLU, was unhappy with the position of the ABA on race, and had resigned in protest on August 8, 1943.

African-American lawyers founded the National Bar Association in 1925 as a professional association separate from the all-white ABA.

Learn more about the internal politics of the ABA and the legal profession: Jerold Auerbach: Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America (1976)

Visit the National Bar Association web site here

Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here

Learn more about African American history: Henry Louis Gates, Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008 (2011)

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