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Judiciary
The history of African Americans in the judiciary of the United States is one of steady, although uneven, progress. Throughout much of the nation's history, the courts were not a friendly place in the eyes of most African Americans, especially in the South. The faces of legal authority were uniformly white—black lawyers were rare and black judges even rarer. That perception began to change during the civil rights movement, as African American justices such as Thurgood Marshall rose to greater prominence. Although today's judiciary is more representative of all races, African American judges still face obstacles to achievement.
Early Black Judiciary
Before the Civil War, there were very few black lawyers or judges in the United States. The first recorded black judge was Massachusetts's Robert Morris, who was appointed to the judiciary in 1850. Morris was one of only two recorded black lawyers in the country at the time. No African American jurist served as a judge in the South until after the Civil War.
The Union victory in the Civil War opened up new opportunities for black legal and political participation in the South. Under the protection of occupying federal forces during the Reconstruction period, black legislators were elected throughout the South, and several states appointed African Americans to high judgeships. The first black state supreme court justice in a Southern state was Jonathon J. Wright, appointed in 1870. Three years later, Mifflin Wister Gibbs in Little Rock, Arkansas, became the first black judge in U.S. history to oversee a trial court with general jurisdiction.
The end of Reconstruction in 1877 brought a serious reversal for black judges and African American legal rights in the South. The black legislators elected a few years earlier were turned out of office, and black voting rights were trampled and restricted in the South. Justice Wright was forced to resign that year, and it would be more than 100 years before another African American was named to a Southern state supreme court.
The Federal Judiciary
African American judges met with resistance not only at the state level but at the federal level as well. The first black judge appointed to a federal judgeship by a president was Robert H. Terrell, named judge of the District of Columbia Municipal Court by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901. This position, however, was term limited and not a lifetime appointment. No other African American received a federal judgeship until 1937, when President Franklin Roosevelt chose William H. Hastie to sit on the District Court for the U.S. Virgin Islands. The federal posts occupied by both Terrell and Hastie became historically “black” judgeships, with African Americans frequently named to fill them.
In 1949, Justice Hastie made history by becoming the first African American appointed to a lifetime position on the federal bench. Twelve years later, James B. Parsons became the first black to preside over a U.S. district court. President John Kennedy, who appointed Parsons, promised to appoint more African Americans to the federal bench, but his record was not terribly impressive—he named just three black judges to federal positions. One of these was Thurgood Marshall, whom Kennedy appointed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1961.
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