Abstract

Excerpted From: John G. Browning, Blazing a Trail for the Nation to Follow: Massachusetts' First Black Lawyers, 105 Massachusetts Law Review 76 (March, 2025) (171 Footnotes) (Full Document)

When Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson spoke on the occasion of her historic confirmation as the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, she acknowledged that she "stood on the shoulders of the path breakers" who had gone before her. Yet while many have assumed that such early trailblazers were limited to figures like Thurgood Marshall or Constance Baker Motley, in reality the first Black lawyers to enter the U.S. legal profession did so a generation before the Civil War. Even more fascinating, most of these legal pioneers called Massachusetts home. By the start of the Civil War, seven Black men had been admitted to the practice of law, and five of them were admitted in the Bay State.

Why was Massachusetts such a hospitable environment for those seeking to integrate the bar? Besides its status as a free state, Massachusetts was a hotbed of the American abolitionist movement. William Lloyd Garrison established the New England Anti-Slavery Society in Boston's African Meeting House in 1832, and decades later, Frederick Douglass would give one of his most famous anti-slavery speeches in the same building in 1860. Massachusetts' reputation for greater racial tolerance was reflected in its status as the first state in the Union to eliminate a legal ban on interracial marriage (1843), prohibit racial segregation in public schools (1855), and grant Black men the right to serve on juries (1860).

For Black individuals seeking to practice law, Massachusetts' abolitionist scene was particularly important. In antebellum America, a formal legal education was a rarity. The vast majority of aspiring attorneys "read the law" under the tutelage of an older lawyer, usually for about two years. They then presented themselves for an oral examination before a local judge or a panel of local practitioners, who would determine the candidate's fitness for admission to the bar. Early Black lawyers usually found the mentors and sponsors they needed from the ranks of sympathetic white abolitionist attorneys.

In this article, we will meet five of these "forgotten firsts" who were admitted in antebellum Massachusetts. We will begin with America's first Black lawyer, Macon Bolling Allen, who made history with his 1844 admission in Maine before becoming a lawyer in neighboring Massachusetts in 1845. Next, we will move on to Robert Morris, who in 1847 became the nation's -- and the state's -- second Black lawyer. Afterward, we will introduce Aaron Alpeoria Bradley (admitted in 1856) and Edward Garrison Walker (admitted in 1861), who also became one of Massachusetts' first Black legislators in 1866. Finally, we will examine the extraordinary but brief life of John S. Rock, who was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1861 and became the first Black man admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court in 1865.

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Black Americans make up roughly 14% of this country's population, yet the percentage of Black lawyers has remained stagnant at only about 5% of the profession for years. According to the National Association for Law Placement's 2023 Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms, only 4.18% of the total lawyers at U.S. law firms were Black. In addition, a study released in 2023 on "Lawyer Well-Being in Massachusetts" by Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers and the NORC at the University of Chicago revealed that the rate of burnout, anxiety, and depression among Black lawyers in the state was 86%, compared to 77% among white lawyers. Given the exposure to bias (both explicit and implicit) and discrimination that so many Black lawyers have experienced, the higher percentage of burnout, anxiety, and depression is hardly unexpected.

A consistent problem with developing a diverse pipeline of students interested in the legal profession is convincing students that such goals are attainable, and that there is a long line of people who look like them who have been able to become a lawyer. Too few people are aware of the fact that before there were the Justice Jacksons, there were the Justice Marshalls, and before them were the Charles Hamilton Houstons, and so on. The adversity overcome by "forgotten firsts" like Macon Bolling Allen and his Massachusetts contemporaries reminds all of us that Black lawyers have been around for a long time, dating back to an era when it was commonplace to deny Black Americans the right to an education and the right of qualified individuals the opportunity to pursue a professional calling. Macon B. Allen, Robert Morris Sr., Aaron Bradley, Edward G. Walker and John S. Rock all dared to dream in the face of injustice, and they left a legacy of hope for future generations. The path followed by Black lawyers today rests on the foundation provided by these ""forgotten firsts."

Hon. John G. Browning is a former justice on Texas' Fifth Court of Appeals, and serves as Distinguished Jurist in Residence at Faulkner University's Thomas Goode Jones School of Law in Montgomery, Alabama.