Bush 43’s Plot to Stop Black Legal Representation
Bush 43’s Plot to Stop Black Legal Representation
The current debate over affirmative action has taken on a new dimension in the Bush regime. While arguing publicly that it embraces the concept of diversity, the Civil Rights Commission, a creation of the Eisenhower Administration, is threatening to decertify the American Bar Association as the accrediting body of the country’s law schools.
In Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), the Supreme Court upheld the preferential admission practices of the University of Michigan Law School. This ruling has encouraged the ABA to propose that law schools comply with the Supreme Court decision on law school admissions. This proposal will be delivered at the ABA annual conference in August.
In the interim, the Education Department is planning to conduct hearings on whether to re-certify the ABA with the authority to accredit law schools. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is encouraging the Education Department to drop the ABA as the accrediting body for law schools if it mandates that Blacks and Indians must be given the opportunity to attend any accredited law school.
Given the ABA proposal, which will be discussed at its annual conference in August, the Education Department has postponed, from June to December, its hearings on the ABA. This proposed administrative action should have already prompted outrage from the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Bar Association which will hold its annual conference just before the ABA conference.
By 1931, the ABA and the Association of American Law Schools had accredited Howard University School of Law. This was the vision of Professor Charles Hamilton Houston and Dr. Modecai W. Johnson, Howard’s first Black president. Among other things, the law school ended its part-time program.
This accreditation was a first step in Houston’s plan to dismantle Jim Crow. Howard’s law school would become a social laboratory producing social engineers. There is a Lesson in Houston’s vision for those Blacks who are currently seeking reparations. There must be an institutional base and there must be a legal education with an orientation to reparations.
Lawyers must be in the vanguard of any struggle in this country like lawyers were in the vanguard of the struggles in Cuba and in South Africa. At Howard, Professor James M. Nabrit, Jr. fashioned the first civil rights course in the country. There is no course offered in reparations –before or now. We must stop putting the cart before the horse.
It is ironic that while the ABA was accrediting Howard Law School, it refused to admit Black lawyers to its body and it had previously established standards to rid Blacks from night law schools. In fact, Black lawyers from those schools were as equipped as Ivy League lawyers.
When the ABA learned, in 1912, that three Black lawyers had unknowingly gained admission to its country club, the ABA acted quickly to close and padlock the door. William H. Lewis was the highest ranking Black public official in the nation. Yet, he was unqualified for ABA membership.
After thirty years of struggle, the ABA knowingly accepted the applications of two New York judges: Francis Ellis Rikers and Samuel Watson. Actually, it took World War II to expose the hypocrisy of American democracy.
The ABA’s policy of racial exclusion prompted Black lawyers to form the NBA in 1925 in Des Moines Iowa. Similarly, the National Lawyers Guild, in 1937, made Charles Hamilton Houston its first Black officeholder and the first Black lawyer to hold an office in a white legal organization.
Jim Crow was unable to compel the University of Michigan Law School to close its doors like the Bush regime is seeking to achieve in 2006. Thomas Ralph Crispus and Albert Burgess graduated from the law school in 1877 while Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes were working out a deal to end Reconstruction.
The law school had a nondiscriminatory policy during Reconstruction. Today, the law school is in the eye of a legal and political storm. As things change, the more they remain the same. White supremacy is a constant and when Blacks drop their guard, history repeats itself.
o0o
The current debate over affirmative action has taken on a new dimension in the Bush regime. While arguing publicly that it embraces the concept of diversity, the Civil Rights Commission, a creation of the Eisenhower Administration, is threatening to decertify the American Bar Association as the accrediting body of the country’s law schools.
In Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), the Supreme Court upheld the preferential admission practices of the University of Michigan Law School. This ruling has encouraged the ABA to propose that law schools comply with the Supreme Court decision on law school admissions. This proposal will be delivered at the ABA annual conference in August.
In the interim, the Education Department is planning to conduct hearings on whether to re-certify the ABA with the authority to accredit law schools. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is encouraging the Education Department to drop the ABA as the accrediting body for law schools if it mandates that Blacks and Indians must be given the opportunity to attend any accredited law school.
Given the ABA proposal, which will be discussed at its annual conference in August, the Education Department has postponed, from June to December, its hearings on the ABA. This proposed administrative action should have already prompted outrage from the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Bar Association which will hold its annual conference just before the ABA conference.
By 1931, the ABA and the Association of American Law Schools had accredited Howard University School of Law. This was the vision of Professor Charles Hamilton Houston and Dr. Modecai W. Johnson, Howard’s first Black president. Among other things, the law school ended its part-time program.
This accreditation was a first step in Houston’s plan to dismantle Jim Crow. Howard’s law school would become a social laboratory producing social engineers. There is a Lesson in Houston’s vision for those Blacks who are currently seeking reparations. There must be an institutional base and there must be a legal education with an orientation to reparations.
Lawyers must be in the vanguard of any struggle in this country like lawyers were in the vanguard of the struggles in Cuba and in South Africa. At Howard, Professor James M. Nabrit, Jr. fashioned the first civil rights course in the country. There is no course offered in reparations –before or now. We must stop putting the cart before the horse.
It is ironic that while the ABA was accrediting Howard Law School, it refused to admit Black lawyers to its body and it had previously established standards to rid Blacks from night law schools. In fact, Black lawyers from those schools were as equipped as Ivy League lawyers.
When the ABA learned, in 1912, that three Black lawyers had unknowingly gained admission to its country club, the ABA acted quickly to close and padlock the door. William H. Lewis was the highest ranking Black public official in the nation. Yet, he was unqualified for ABA membership.
After thirty years of struggle, the ABA knowingly accepted the applications of two New York judges: Francis Ellis Rikers and Samuel Watson. Actually, it took World War II to expose the hypocrisy of American democracy.
The ABA’s policy of racial exclusion prompted Black lawyers to form the NBA in 1925 in Des Moines Iowa. Similarly, the National Lawyers Guild, in 1937, made Charles Hamilton Houston its first Black officeholder and the first Black lawyer to hold an office in a white legal organization.
Jim Crow was unable to compel the University of Michigan Law School to close its doors like the Bush regime is seeking to achieve in 2006. Thomas Ralph Crispus and Albert Burgess graduated from the law school in 1877 while Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes were working out a deal to end Reconstruction.
The law school had a nondiscriminatory policy during Reconstruction. Today, the law school is in the eye of a legal and political storm. As things change, the more they remain the same. White supremacy is a constant and when Blacks drop their guard, history repeats itself.
o0o
posted by Attorney Alton Maddox at 1:40 PM
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