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JudgesLawyers
The Massachusetts Black Lawyers Conference was founded in 1973 to represent the interests of African American attorneys in Massachusetts. It sponsors educational programs for its members, supports African American nominees for judicial appointment, and advocates on behalf of the African American bar in public forums.
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Attorney Macon B. Allen
Attorney Robert Morris
Attorney Butler Wilson
Attorney James H. Wolff
Attorney Edward E. Brown
Attorney William H. Lewis
Attorney Inez C. Fields
Attorney Robert Morris Stevens
Attorney Harry T. Daniels
Attorney Rudolph F. Pierce
Attorney Wayne A. Budd
Attorney Ralph C. Martin, III
Attorney Thomas I. Atkins
Attorney Edward W. Brooke
Attorney Geraldine S. Hines
Attorney Ruth Ellen Fitch
Attorney Marie P. St. Fleur
Probation Officer Harry F. Lofton
Firsts
- George Lewis Ruffin was the first black law student to graduate from Harvard Law School in 1869.
- In 1901, Clement G. Morgan was the first African American lawyer in Massachusetts to argue before the Supreme Judicial Court.
- William H. Lewis was appointed the first black assistant attorney general of the United States in 1910 by President William H. Taft.
- Leanna Johnson, a Portia Law School graduate, became the first woman of color to pass the Massachusetts bar in 1922.
Attorney
Macon B. Allen
1816 - 1894
Macon B. Allen was the first African American admitted to practice law in the United States when he was admitted to the Maine bar in 1845. He was later admitted to the Massachusetts bar and served as a justice of the peace in the state until after the Civil War, when he moved to South Carolina, where, in 1873, he was elected to a judgeship.
Attorney
Robert Morris
1823 - 1882
The grandson of an enslaved man from Massachusetts who had been freed by the decision in Commonwealth v. Nathaniel Jennison, (Massachusetts, 1783, Unreported), Robert Morris was the second African American to be admitted to practice law in Massachusetts. Tutored by his mentor, the abolitionist lawyer, Ellis Gray Loring, Morris was admitted to the Suffolk bar on February 2, 1847. Morris was a gifted and successful trial lawyer, representing fugitive slaves and civil rights causes, as well as white and black clients in traditional legal matters.
Attorney
Butler Wilson
1861 - 1939
Butler Wilson was an 1883 graduate of Boston University School of Law who started his legal career as the office apprentice of Judge George Lewis Ruffin and ended it as Master in Chancery. A co-founder of the Boston Branch of the NAACP, he represented a number of black defendants in extradition proceedings in the 1920s and 1930s against Southern states where the conditions for African Americans were brutal.
Attorney James H. Wolff
In 1861, at age 15, James H. Wolff volunteered to serve in the U.S. Navy for the Union during the Civil War. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1875 after a year at Harvard Law School. He was appointed by Governor John D. Long as a clerk in the Adjutant General’s Office, and he served until 1883. He co-founded Walker, Wolff & Brown, which was the first comprehensive black law firm in Massachusetts. He was active in the late 19th-century struggle for civil rights in Massachusetts. In 1901, Wolff was appointed judge advocate general in the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), a racially integrated organization of honorably discharged Civil War veterans.
Attorney Edward E. Brown
Edward E. Brown qualified as an attorney in 1883. Along with Butler Wilson, Archibald Grimke, and James Wolff, he led the campaign to improve the civil rights laws of Massachusetts during the 1880s. He later became a leader in Booker T. Washington’s National Negro Business League and a partner in Wolff’s law practice.
Attorney
William H. Lewis
1868 - 1949
While a student at Harvard Law School in the 1890s, William H. Lewis was refused a haircut by a white barber in Cambridge (see Litigants and Landmark Cases exhibit). He and Butler Wilson, Esq., persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to broaden the state’s anti-discrimination statute to include barbershops and other places of public accommodation.
When a law student, Lewis became the first African American to be named to the Walter Camp All-American Football Team in 1892. He was named to the team again in 1893.
In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt named Lewis to be the first black Assistant United States Attorney. In 1911, he was appointed by President William H. Taft as the first African American assistant attorney general in the United States Justice Department, the highest office in the executive branch of government offered to any black man. He later returned to Massachusetts and entered the private practice of law, representing clients from every walk of life. He was an outstanding lawyer with extensive trial experience in Massachusetts courts, as well as appearances before the Supreme Court of the United States. Although President Taft recommended him for the Massachusetts Superior Court in 1913, Massachusetts Governor Eugene N. Foss never appointed him to the position.
Attorney
Inez C. Fields
1895 – 1978
Inez C. Fields, a 1922 graduate of Boston University School of Law, became one of the first black women admitted to the Massachusetts bar, before returning to her native Virginia to join the firm run by her father George Washington Fields.
Attorney Robert Morris Stevens
Robert Morris Stevens was the first African American attorney to practice in Western Massachusetts where he had an office in Pittsfield. In the 1930s, he represented the accused in a highly publicized interracial murder trial. It appears that his parents named him in honor of the nineteenth century black attorney Robert Morris.
Attorney Harry T. Daniels
A graduate of Northeastern Law School, Harry T. Daniels joined the Boston law firm of Hale & Dorr in 1971 as an associate in the litigation department. In 1978, he became the first African American partner of a major law firm in Massachusetts legal history. From 1994 to 1998, Daniels served as chairman of the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct. He retired in 2011.
Attorney Rudolph F. Pierce
Rudolph F. Pierce began his legal career as an associate in the Boston law firm of Crane, Inker & Oteri after graduating from Harvard Law School in 1970. He later served as a magistrate in the United States District Court and as a justice of the Superior Court, before resigning to return to private practice. He was a partner in the Boston law firm of Goulston & Storrs until his retirement in 2008. In 1989, Pierce became the first African American president of the Boston Bar Association.
Attorney
Wayne A. Budd
1941 -
A graduate of Wayne State University Law School, Wayne A. Budd has been engaged in the private practice of law in a variety of settings. He also served in the public sector as United States Attorney for Massachusetts and associate attorney general of the United States in the George H.W. Bush Administration. He was senior executive vice president and general counsel of John Hancock Financial Services. In 1979, Budd became the first African American president of the Massachusetts Bar Association, and at that time, he was the youngest president of any state bar association. He is currently Senior Counsel at the law firm Goodwin Procter.
Attorney Ralph C. Martin, II
The son of a New York City police officer, Ralph C. Martin, II, began his legal career in 1983 as a prosecutor in the office of the district attorney of Middlesex County after graduating from Boston College Law School. In 1985, he became an assistant United States attorney. In 1992, Governor William Weld appointed him to complete the unexpired term of district attorney of Suffolk County, thereby becoming the first African American to hold that position. Voters retained him in this position following a general election in 1994 and 1998. Martin then became the managing partner of the Boston office of the law firm Bingham McCutchen. He held that position until 2011, when he became Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Northeastern University.
Attorney
Thomas I. Atkins
1939 - 2008
A graduate of Harvard Law School, Thomas I. Atkins was associate trial counsel for the plaintiffs in Morgan v. Hennigan, 379 F. Supp. 410 (D. Mass. 1974), the Boston school desegregation case. He was named interim president of the Boston branch of the NAACP in 1974 and then elected to serve as president for a two-year term. On October 26, 1971, Atkins was appointed Secretary of Communities and Development under Governor Francis Sargent, becoming the first African American to serve as a state Cabinet Secretary. In 1967, he became the first African American elected to the Boston City Council in the 20th century. Atkins died in 2008.
Attorney
Edward W. Brooke
1919 - 2015
Edward W. Brooke graduated Boston University School of Law in 1948, where he was a member of the law review. When he was unable to find employment with a major law firm, he began his career, like many black lawyers, as a single practitioner in Roxbury. In 1962, he was elected Attorney General of Massachusetts, becoming the first African American to hold the office in the United States. In 1966, he was elected to the United States Senate from Massachusetts, becoming the first African American elected to that body since Reconstruction. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.
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Attorney
Geraldine S. Hines
1947 -
Geraldine S. Hines began her legal career in 1971 as a staff attorney with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute after graduating from University of Wisconsin Law School. She served as a public defender with the Roxbury Defenders Committee from 1973–1977. In 1982, she entered private practice. She has been an adjunct professor of law at Northeastern Law School since 1980. She served on the Judicial Nominating Commission and the steering committee of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She was appointed as the first African American woman to serve on the Supreme Judicial Court in 2014 by Governor Deval Patrick.
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Attorney Ruth Ellen Fitch
Ruth Ellen Fitch joined the Boston law firm of Palmer & Dodge in 1983, after graduating from Harvard Law School. She was a member of the firm’s Public Law and Finance Department, specializing in bond issues and environmental matters. In 1991, she became a partner at Palmer & Dodge. In 2004, she became the President/CEO of Dimock Community Health Center until her retirement in 2013.
Attorney
Marie P. St. Fleur
1962 -
A graduate of Boston College Law School, Marie P. St. Fleur began her legal career in 1987 in the Office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County. In 1991, she was appointed assistant attorney general in the Trial Division of the Office of the Attorney General, where she rose to become chief of the Unemployment Fraud Division. In 1999, she was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives from the Fifth Suffolk District. She is the first Haitian American ever to hold state elected office in Massachusetts and in the United States. In 2010, she was appointed Chief of Advocacy and Strategic Investment for the City of Boston. In 2013, she continued her career in public service when she joined the Bessie Tartt Wilson Initiative for Children, a non-profit research and advocacy organization.
Probation Officer Harry F. Lofton
Harry F. Lofton was the first African American in the Massachusetts Probation Service. Appointed in 1946, he began his career as a probation officer and retired in 1974 as the first assistant chief probation officer of the Roxbury District Court. In addition, he served as a colonel in the United States Army Reserves.