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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

JANE MATILDA BOLIN: A PIONEER FOR JUSTICE, 1939-1978

presented by

Jacqueline Allison McLeod

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. degreein HlStory

 

 

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Major professor

Date . :25, 20092.2

 

MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0- 12771

 

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PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
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JANE MATILDA BOLIN: A PIONEER FOR JUSTICE, 1939-1978

BY

Jacqueline Allison McLeod

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of History

2002

ABSTRACT
JANE MATILDA BOLIN: A PIONEER FOR JUSTICE, 1939-1978
BY

Jacqueline Allison McLeod

This study examines the life and contributions of
Judge Jane Matilda Bolin, America's first African American
woman judge. Her forty—year judicial tenure began in 1939,
when Mayor LaGuardia appointed her to the Domestic
Relations Court of the City of New York (which later became
the Family Court of the State of New York.)

The study analyzes her professional ascendance, and
how she constructed her professional identity, in a
profession that routinely excluded African Americans and
women. It, therefore, utilizes an intersectional approach
to a race, class, and gender analysis of her life. Her
politicization on and off the bench is also analyzed within
the context of the Red Scare and the early Civil Rights
Movement.

Through careful interrogation of the Bolin Papers, the
NAACP Papers (both National and Branch), newspaper articles
from the Black and White press, and court cases, the author
demonstrates that whatever the motivation for LaGuardia’s

appointment, Judge Bolin distinguished herself as anything

but a political pawn, working as she did to transform the
Domestic Relations Court and its associate agencies.

Understanding how this legal pioneer constructed her
professional identity, and how she maneuvered through the
labyrinth of obstacles over four decades provides a marker
to better measure the distance traveled by African American
women in the legal profession, specifically in their
capacity as jurists. But, on a more immediate level, it
reveals the professional and political journey of a woman,
who was a feminist, an integrationist, and an overall

justice activist.

Copyright by
JACQUELINE ALLISON MCLEOD
2002

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A road such as this is never traveled alone. I am
fortunate to have traveled it with persons committed to my
success. I remain forever grateful for the spiritual,
intellectual, social, and financial support given by so
many.

I am grateful to my advisor and mentor, Dr. Darlene
Clark Hine, whose unswerving support and encouragement made
the difference between a graduate program and a career. I
remain indebted to all the members of my committee,
Professors Wilma King, Peter Beattie, Elizabeth Eldredge,
Barry Gaspar, and Kenneth Harrow, for their expertise and
professionalism throughout this process.

I would like to thank all of my friends, old and new,
especially Linda Werbish, Felix Armfield, and Gregory
Murray, and my entire East Lansing family of friends. Your
friendship has truly been, and continues to be, a blessing
to me. To the entire staff of the Department of History,
thank you. Your patience and assistance have always been
appreciated. To Professors Thornton and Jones, and Yvette,
of The Graduate School, thank you. I could not have
completed my program without the generous sponsorship of

the King-Chavez—Parks Dissertation Fellowship.

I am eternally grateful for the unconditional love,
support, and encouragement of family. Always celebrating,
and never doubting, my goals, you allowed me to soar. To
my mother, Doris McLeod, my sister, Ingrid Dublin, my
grandmother, Marjorie Forde, and my father Percival
Sinclair McLeod, thank you, thank you. And finally, to a
very special young lady, my daughter, Jeuneille, without
whose love and cooperation, this journey would have been
lonely and rough, I remain dedicated. You have given my
life tremendous meaning and purpose, and your smile and
energy continue to be a source of much inspiration and

happiness in my life. I love you Sweetie.

vi

PREFACE

Ten years ago while doing research for a seminar paper
on Constance Baker Motley, the long-time counsel for the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) and federal judge, I discovered what a profound
impact Judge Bolin had had on her, and other black women in
the legal profession. Motley had had outstanding mentors
such as Thurgood Marshall, but it was Judge Jane Matilda
Bolin whom she heralded as her role model. In her words,
it was Judge Bolin who had shown her how “a lady judge”
should comport herself.

Preliminary research on Judge Bolin revealed the
depths of work that lay ahead of me. There was not much in
the way of monographs on black women lawyers, and nothing
substantive on black women judges. Thus began my journey
to have Jane Bolin's discourse restore her visibility in
the historical record.

In 1939, when New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia
appointed Jane Matilda Bolin to the Domestic Relations
Court of the City of New York (which later became the
Family Court of the State of New York), he made history
and, what many called, an appeasement to the City’s African

American community. With LaGuardia’s appointment, Bolin

vfi

became the first African American woman ever to be a judge
in the United States, and remained the only one for the
next two decades.

Her judgeship came at a very critical juncture in the
relationship between LaGuardia and Harlem’s Black
community, which had erupted years earlier because of
political and economic neglect that had worsened with the
Depression. Whatever the motivation for LaGuardia’s
appointment, Judge Bolin distinguished herself as much more
than a political pawn. She worked to transform the
Domestic Relations Court and its associate agencies,
successfully eliminating race-specific assignments in the
Probation Department and Juvenile Placement facilities.
Yet, somehow her legacy, which represents the Family
Court’s continued efforts to bridge the gap between its
ideals and its practice, has eluded historical inquiry.

This study corrects the historical record. It
examines Bolin’s life and contributions as a judicial
pioneer, and analyzes her professional ascendance, and the
way in which she constructed her professional identity, in
a profession that routinely excluded African Americans and
women. Therefore, it utilizes an intersectional approach
to a race, class, and gender analysis of Bolin’s life,

which is very instructive of the unique positioning of

vfii

African American women lawyers, and more specifically,
African American women jurists.

The study also analyzes Bolin’s politicization on and
off the bench, and the extent to which her brand of
activism within the black community may have caused her
alienation from that community. Her judicial tenure
exemplified her activism and integrationist zeal. Her
sense of responsibility had precursors within her family,
and had taken root decades earlier in the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),
where she was a founding member of its Poughkeepsie Youth
Chapter, and later a vice-president of its New York Branch,
and National Office. Decades after her first judicial
appointment, her footprints for reform are still imbedded

in the Family Court of the State of New York.

ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ............................................. 1
CHAPTER 1

The Early Years in Poughkeepsie: “At the Foot of One Hill
and the Top of Another" .................................. 9
CHAPTER 2

One Her Own: The Years at Wellesley and Yale ........... 29
CHAPTER 3

The Politics of Preparation: The Making of an African
American Woman Judge .................................... 57
CHAPTER 4

Speaking Truth to Power: A View From the Bench of Judge
Bolin .................................................. 108
CHAPTER 5

“Persona Non—Grata:" The Honorable Jane Matilda Bolin and
the NAACP .............................................. 156
CONCLUSION ............................................. 219
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................... 236

I NTRODUCT I ON

The life and times of the Honorable Jane Matilda Bolin
of New York exemplify the myriad experiences of Black women
lawyers in the United States. This history of Black women
attorneys is easy to trace given their small numbers in the
legal profession. Nevertheless, scholarly analyses of
their particular experiences as insurgent professionals
remain few.

Recent literature touches on the lives of Black women
lawyers, but their thoughts and perspectives have generally
remained hidden in the general histories of Black men and

white women. Karen Berger Morello's The Invisible Bar: The

 

Woman Lawyer in America 1638 to the Present (New York:

 

Random House, 1986), addresses the gender and race
dynamics, or what she terms the "double impairment" faced
by Black women lawyers in a chapter titled "Double
Impairment: Black Women Lawyers." However, little specific
analysis is accorded all the Black woman lawyers and

jurists identified. J. Clay Smith's 1993 Emancipation: The

 

Making of the Black Lawyer 1844—1944 fills the void in the

 

historical record as it pertains to all Black lawyers, but
missed the mark when it came to Black women lawyers.
Smith's privileging of the path and pain of Black male
lawyers does shed light on some of what Black women as
race-specific professionals faced in the legal profession,

but the particularity of their experience as Black women

was given short shrift. As if to correct the imbalance or

oversight, more recently Smith edited Rebels in Law: Voices

 

in History of Black Women Lawyers, a collection of articles

 

that includes the voices of early Black women in the law.
This long-overdue anthology, however, gives cursory mention
of America's first Black woman jurist. Constance Baker

Motley's autobiography Equal Justice Under Law is the first

 

such autobiography, which offers a unique window into the
life of one of America's finest social engineers, and an
early Black woman jurist.l

This study offers the words and works of Jane Matilda
Bolin as a beginning analysis of Black women in the legal
profession. Moreover, it restores the dynamism to
experiences too long subsumed within the history of Black
men lawyers and White women lawyers. It will show that
although Black women in the legal profession shared "some
of the problems and promises of all Blacks, of all women,
and of all lawyers,"2 they occupied a unique positioning
within this profession. Their professional advancement in
the legal profession has therefore been achieved in spite

of great obstacles.3

 

1 Karen Berger Morello's The Invisible Bar: The Woman Lawyer in America
1638 to the Present (New York: Random House, 1986); J. Clay Smith,
Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844—1944 (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993); Smith, ed., Rebels in Law:
Voices in History of Black Women Lawyers (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1998); Constance Baker Motley, Equal Justice Under the
Law: An Autobiography (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1998).

2 Joyce Ann Hughes, "The Black Portia," The Crisis (May, 1975): 168.

3 In 1872, Charlotte E. Ray became the country's first Black woman
lawyer, and remained the only one for the next twelve years.

 

 

 

 

 

Jane Matilda Bolin, the youngest of four children, was
born in 1908 in Poughkeepsie, New York to Matilda Ingram
Bolin and Gaius Charles Bolin. The Bolins are descendents
of a long line of free Dutchess County Black residents who
had lived in and around Poughkeepsie for nearly 200 years.4

Gaius Bolin was a prominent lawyer and community leader in

 

Discrimination forced her to relinquish her practice in Washington,
D.C. and to accept a teaching position the very year she was admitted
to practice law. White law firms hired very few women or Black lawyers
before the 19705, and prior to the 19605 only a token number of Black
lawyers worked in government agencies. In 1910 there were only two
Black women lawyers in the country. Although the number would increase
over the next decades, there were no more than 57 Black women lawyers
by the 19405. In 1959 there were reportedly over 6,000 women lawyers
in the U.S., but only 83 of them were Black. Of the 83, New York led
the list with 19, followed by Illinois with 13, and Washington, D.C.
with 10; and only one on the bench. See Marianna W. Davis, ed., The
Contributions of Black Women to America, Vol. I (Columbia, South
Carolina: Kenday Press, 1982); Morello, The Invisible Bar, Gerda
Lerner, ed., Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (New
York: Vintage Books, 1973); Alvin E. White, "Women Judges," Dawn
Magazine, (October 26, 1974). See also, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Women
in Law (New York: Basic Books, 1981); Edward J. Littlejohn and Donald
L. Hobson, Black Lawyers, Law Practice, and Bar Associations, 1844-
1970: A Michigan History (Detroit: Wolverine Bar Association, 1987);
Beverly B. Cook, ed., Women in the Judicial Process (American Political
Science Association, 1988; and Laura L. Crites and Winifred L.
Hepperle, eds., Women, the Courts, and Equity (Newbury Park: Sage,
1987).

4 An Oral History Project of Black Poughkeepsians confirms such
generational ties of present-day residents to free Blacks in the
antebellum period. An Act for gradual abolition manumitted many slaves
in Poughkeepsie between 1799 and 1826. The famous Underground Railroad
had stops in Poughkeepsie and a number of other cities along the Mid-
Hudson. As a result, a number of Blacks settled in Poughkeepsie,
particularly during the "city-building" process of the 18605 to 18805,
and established institutions like the A.M.E. Zion Church and a Colored
School within their enclaves. Lawrence Mamiya and Patricia Kaurouma,
For Their Courage and For Their Struggles: The Black Oral History
Project of Poughkeepsie, New York (Urban Center for Africana Studies:
Vassar College, 1978). It is clear from the oral histories of Black
Poughkeepsians that by the late nineteenth century their communities
boasted a class, however small, of property-owners. Jane Bolin's own
paternal grandfather, Abram Bolin, was educated in a local country
district school, and was in the wholesale vegetable business, but had
also been a grocer, a meat market proprietor, and a livestock salesman.
See For Their Courage and for Their Struggles, and Dennis Clark
Dickerson, "Gaius Charles Bolin: The First Black Graduate of Williams
College," Williams Alumni Review.

 

 

 

 

 

 

their hometown of Poughkeepsie. Matilda Ingram Bolin was
born in Ireland to English parents, and immigrated to the
United States as a child. In 1917, Matilda Bolin died,
leaving young Jane and siblings to be reared by their
father.5

Jane Bolin, like her brother and sisters, and father
before her, was educated in the Poughkeepsie Public School
system.6 After graduating high school Bolin passed up an
opportunity to attend Vassar College and left home for
Wellesley College in Massachusetts. One of only two Black
freshmen, she found herself completely isolated from
Wellesley's community of white women.7 Upon graduation, and
much to the irritation of her college counselor, she
insisted on a career in law and applied to Yale Law School.
In 1928 Bolin entered Yale, exactly ten years after the
University Corporation at Yale voted to admit women for
legal study. Her graduation from Yale in 1931 signaled the
beginning of a remarkable series of Black "firsts," and a

resounding commitment to activism.

 

5 Jane Bolin Interview with Jean Rudd, 1990, Box 1, Bolin Papers,
Schomburg Center, New York City Public Library.

6 During Gaius Bolin's youth, in 1873, a civil rights law was passed
that allowed New York youth, regardless of race, to enroll in any
public school. This legislation ended separate education for
Poughkeepsie Blacks. However, this legislation did not alter the
racial exclusionary practices of the higher institutions of learning,
such as Eastman College, Vassar College, and West Point Military
Academy. See Dennis Charles Dickerson, "Success Story....With a
Difference," Williams Alumni Review, Mamiya and Kaurouma, For Their
Courage and for Their Struggles. Also see, Carleton Mabee, "Toussaint
College: A Proposed Black College for New York State in the 18705,"
Afro-Americans in New York Life and History (January, 1977): 25-35.

7 "Wellesley in My Life," in Wellesley After-Images, Box 1, Bolin
Papers, Schomburg Center, New York City Public Library.

 

 

In 1933 Bolin was the first African American woman to
join the New York State Bar Association. She was the first
African American woman to win appointment to the Office of
the Corporation Council of New York Law Department, and in
1939, she became the first Black woman in America's history
to become a judge. New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia
appointed and swore her into office. However, she
transcended what many believed to be tokenism, and for the
next four decades served with uncompromising ardor as a
judge in the Family Court of the State of New York and its
predecessor courts. Intellectually astute, committed to
making the law an instrument of fairness, Bolin soon
ruffled the bench from a certain lethargy. Her reformist
zeal excited her close friends and colleagues and
encouraged them to join in her crusade for change.

Early on she initiated public dialogue over issues of
institutional discrimination that helped transform the
Juvenile Justice System. She contested the race-specific
assignments of probation officers, at a time when it was
customary for local White judges to never assign Black
lawyers to represent indigent White defendants. She
challenged private child-care agencies' odious practice of
routinely accepting children based on ethnic background,
and caused the director of the New York City Office of

Probation for the Courts to account for, and discontinue,

the inscriptions of "N" and "PR" (designating Negro and
Puerto Rican) on petitions of placement.8

She was an outsider within who made a difference in
the legal profession. By situating her within an early
twentieth- century community of insurgent Black
professionals, this study explores the gender dynamics of
early civil rights organizations, the interdependence of
the Black professional and the Black community, and the
gender and racial politics of the legal profession.
Utilizing an intersectional approach to a race, class, and
gender analysis of Bolin's life, this study will also show
the extent to which her political convictions may have kept
her off the roster of well-known past and contemporary
civil rights trailblazers.

The first chapter focuses on the Bolin family's
lineage and legacy, which is the foundation upon which Jane
Bolin constructs her identity. It also examines and
analyzes her childhood in an upper-middle class
Poughkeepsie community, her relationship with her father
Gaius Charles Bolin and siblings, and her educational
experiences from Poughkeepsie's Kindergarten Morse School
to Yale Law School.

Chapter Two examines Jane Bolin's membership in the

legal profession. To be sure, Bolin appears to have

 

8 Retired Family Court Judges Justine Wise Polier and Hubert Delany
worked closely with Bolin to bring about these changes. 1990 Interview
with Rudd, Box 1, Bolin Papers, Schomburg Center, New York City Public
Library.

ascended the professional ranks with relative ease at a
time in American society when the fundamentals of education
and employment eluded most African Americans. Yet, in
reality she encountered resistance and rejection at every
stage of her professional development, and experienced the
frustrations shared by most Black private practitioners of
the time. I also discuss Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's
political agenda and the social, political and economic
climate of New York City at the time of her appointment.

Bolin served over the course of four decades in the
Family Court of the State of New York and its predecessor
courts, where she not only imparted justice, but also
fought for justice. Her opinions, teachings, and overall
ideological positioning influenced her often more renowned
contemporaries. To this end, Chapter Three probes the
speeches, judicial decisions, and other writings of Jane
Bolin, which at a minimum reveal clues about "the
intellectual inconsistencies which constitute the mind-set
of any age."9

Chapter Four examines Jane Bolin's relationship with
the national leadership of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) during the 19405 and
19505. The issues surrounding Bolin's 1950 vice-presidency
of the NAACP and her unexpected resignation are analyzed

within the context of longstanding intra-organizational

 

9 Levesque speaking of Dr. John Rock in George A. Levesque, "Boston's
Black Brahmin: Dr. John S. Rock," Civil War History XXVI, No. 4 (1980).

 

discord, and widespread "Red—baiting." Particular
attention is paid to the role of the black press in
exposing, and at times fueling, the disunity within the
ranks of the NAACP leadership.

When women penetrate the walls of male—dominated
spaces their contributions become celebratory. Their
intrusion or inclusion is seen as a challenge to male
professional hegemony. To be sure, Bolin is listed among
notable African American pioneers. But, in Bolin, we also
have a very visible and vocal early twentieth—century Black
woman jurist who dared to challenge the male—dominated
national leadership of the nation's leading civil rights
organization. Yet, she remains analytically invisible in
the historical record - her complex identity as woman,
professional, race-woman, feminist, community
representative and activist — obscured by the fictions of
"firsts." Chapter Five, therefore, concludes this study
with a conversation about the process of historical
obscurity or analytical invisibility to better understand

how Judge Jane Matilda Bolin "eluded" historical inquiry.

Chapter 1

THE EARLY YEARS IN POUGHKEEPSIE:
"At the foot of one hill and the top of another"

Jane Matilda Bolin was reared
in an upper middle—class
professional family poised to
assume prominence in her own
right.10

Jane Matilda Bolin was born on April 11, 1908 to
Matilda Ingram Bolin and Gaius Charles Bolin "in a red
brick, three-story house at the foot of one hill and the
top of another hill" in Poughkeepsie, New York.11 She was
the youngest of four children, two sisters, Anna May and
Ivy Rosalind and a brother, Gaius Charles Junior.12 Her
mother whom she describes as "English Episcopalian" was
born in 1880 in Northern Ireland to English Protestant
parents with whom she immigrated as a child to the United
States. The Emerys, Matilda Ingram Bolin's family, were
one of several early European immigrant families that

settled in Poughkeepsie in the late nineteenth century.

 

10 This is the author's interpretation of Bolin’s description of her
beginnings.

11 Bolin frames the interview, and by implication her biography with
this positioning, a positioning which will become quite symbolic in
understanding her life, and at times a metaphor for her negotiation
later in life. The foot of one hill was in essence the top of another
that had been conquered by her forefathers...her journey therefore
begun on the promise of her family's legacy. Jane Bolin's 1990
interview with Jean Rudd, Box 1, Bolin Papers, Schomburg Center, New
York City Public Library.

12 Anna May was born on December 31, 1900, Gaius Charles, Jr. was born
on March 31, 1902, Ivy Rosalind was born on May 11, 1904, and Jennie,
as Jane was fondly called by her family, was born on April 11, 1908.
Biographical Folder, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

The Emerys, mother, father, brother and sister, with the
exception of the married Matilda, later moved to Hoboken,
New Jersey. Matilda was educated in the public schools of
Troy, New York. She died after a prolonged illness in 1917
leaving nine—year old Jane and siblings to be reared by
their father.13

From all accounts, Gaius Bolin executed his
responsibility as sole caregiver with unconventional
devotion.14 Although managing a legal career, he never
neglected his children whom he considered his primary
responsibility. He had four young children, but chose
never to remarry. As Jane recalls, her father basically
came home and stayed in the house with them all the time,
except for those times when he had scheduled major outings
like the trips to the "Trotting Races" and the Labor Day

trip to his brother Livingsworth's home in New York.15 Jane

 

13 Ibid. Her maternal grandfather, John, died before she was born, but
her maternal grandmother, uncle and aunt would each visit every year
for a few weeks. However, after her mother died her family never
communicated with the Bolins in any way. Interview by Rudd, Box 1,
Bolin Papers.

14 In her 1990 interview with Rudd, Bolin takes great pride in telling
of her father's decision not to remarry, and to embrace the full
responsibility of caring for her and her three siblings. She also
recalls that her eldest sister Anna assumed the mother role after her
mother's death, but that after Anna eloped her other sister Ivy assumed
the role of homemaker. Her parents married in 1899 in New York City.
Anna May born 12-31-1900, Gaius Jr. born 3-31-1902, Ivy Rosalind born
5-11-1904, Jennie 4-11-1908. Ivy never married, and died when she was
about 34 years old. Anna had one son who was left in the care of her
father when she died during the child's infancy. Their brother did not
pay much attention to the girls, but spend a lot more time outdoors
with his friends. Interview with Rudd, 27, Box 1, Bolin Papers,
Schomburg Center, New York City Public Library.

15 She remembers having recreation outside of the home only twice a
year. Once a year he used to take one afternoon from his office, take
us with him and go to the Trotting Races, which were there for about a

10

Bolin remembers her father as "a terrific man." "As the

youngest child and motherless from the age of 8, I was

always very close to my father and I guess spoiled by him,‘
she said.

To illustrate his devotion she recalled that shortly
after her mother's death, the family moved from the three-
storied brick house to a "very spacious house" which her
mother had planned, and which was built and finished a few
months after her death.16 She remembered being physically
sick with grief, and her father's sensitivity in knowing
that she would be too upset by the move so soon after her
mother's death. As a result, when the family moved, he
took her to her Aunt Jane, after whom she was named and who
then became her "surrogate mother." She stayed with her
aunt who nursed her until she was better and was able to go
home.17 However, she admits that "it was not until I was
grown and had my own family and was widowed that I truly
appreciated his unselfish devotion to his children."18

Her father was a strict disciplinarian who had no

tolerance for lies. According to Jane, "we were taught not

 

week in the summertime. And the other occasion was Labor Day. He used
to bring us all down to visit his brother [in N.Y.], just for the
weekend. Interview with Rudd, 5, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

15 Ibid., 28.

17 Her Aunt Jane was the wife of her father's older brother. She was
also a white woman. Bolin recalls that there were quite a few
interracial couples in their community. All through the years, until
she died, her aunt remained her favorite and closest female relative
(3). Interview with Rudd, 29, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

18 Jim Haviland, "Local Attorneys Recall First Black to Head County
Bar," Poughkeepsie Journal 28 February 1991.

 

 

to lie, just as all children are taught, not to steal, come
straight home from school, not to talk to strange people."19
Perhaps this early socialization helped shape the
professional orientation and development of the Bolin
children. Ivy was a founding member of the NAACP Youth
chapter in Poughkeepsie. Gaius Charles Bolin, Jr. became a
lawyer and shared a practice with his father in
Poughkeepsie until his retirement. Anna finished high
school and eloped while Jane was still quite young.20 Hi5
grandson Lionel, his son's son, remembers his grandfather
fondly; he recalls the day trips and many walks around
town, and his taking him to school.21

The Bolins were descendents of a long line of free
Dutchess County Black residents who had lived in and around
Poughkeepsie for nearly 200 years. Present—day residents
of Poughkeepsie can identify generational ties to free
Black people in the antebellum period. The earliest census
contained in the Poughkeepsie City Directory for "Colored"
persons during the years 1869-1870 and 1880-1881 lists
names, occupations and addresses of the early Black
residents such as Bolin, Lawrence, Cooley, Harden, DuBois,

and Van Dusen.22 Many slaves in Poughkeepsie were

 

19 Interview with Rudd, 40.
20 Interview with Rudd, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

21 Oral Interview of Lionel Bolin by Williams College Librarian, 1989,
Williams College.

22 Lawrence Mamiya and Patricia Kaurouma, For Their Courage and For
Their Struggles: The Black Oral History Project of Poughkeepsie, New
York (Vassar College: Urban Center for Africana Studies, 1978); Denise
Love Johnson, "Black Migration," Poughkeepsie Bicentennial Forum

 

 

manumitted between 1799 and 1826 under an Act calling for
the gradual abolition of slavery.23 The Underground
Railroad had stops in Poughkeepsie and a number of Black
people settled in Poughkeepsie, particularly during the
"city—building" period from the 18605 to the 18805. These
early residents established institutions such as the A.M.E.
Zion Church and a Colored School within their enclaves.24
Most Blacks during this period worked as domestics or
unskilled laborers. By 1870, the "Queen City" of the Mid—
Hudson, as Poughkeepsie was called, had a Black population

of more than 500, the largest in the area.25 Prior to 1850

 

(Publication of Poughkeepsie High School, June-July, 1976): 6. Clyde
and Sally Griffen's study on the ordering of opportunity in mid—
nineteenth-century Poughkeepsie, while it does a good job of
distinguishing between the opportunities available to European
immigrants and Black Americans, it overlooks the community—building and
opportunity-creating activities of Black people. Clyde and Sally
Griffen, Natives and Newcomers: The Ordering of Opportunity in Mid-
Nineteenth—Century Poughkeepsie (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1978) .

23 In 1817, under the leadership of Governor Daniel Tompkins, New York
became the first state to declare by statute that after July 4, 1827
the practice of slavery in the state was to be abolished. By 1830 only
the county of Putnam in the Mid-Hudson still continued the institution
under a legal technicality which permitted non-residents to keep slaves
in the state for a period of up to nine months. Donald L. Robinson,
Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765-1820 (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), 36.

 

 

24 Mamiya and Kaurouma, For Their Courage. The most famous
abolitionist in the Mid-Hudson was Sojourner Truth who hid runaway
slaves in a cellar in Hurley, New York. See, Johnson, "Migration," 2—4.
See also Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (New
York: Norton, 1996. General histories on the Underground Railroad
include, Larry Gara, The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground
Railroad (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1961); Wilbur H.
Siebert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom 1898.
Reprint, (New York: Arno, 1968); William Still, The Underground
Railroad 1871 Reprint, (Chicago: Johnson Publishing, 1970).

25 Johnson notes that most freed Blacks remained on farms and in rural
areas, not immediately moving to Poughkeepsie. Johnson finds that
theirs was a gradual movement from one rural town or village to
another. "Chain migration" was the pattern employed by later waves of
Black people migrating from the Southern states due to failures in

 

 

 

 

l3

Poughkeepsie's Black population was located in several
centers on the fringes of the central business district
bounded by Washington and Market Streets. This area was
also populated by members of the White working class and
ethnic groups, particularly the recently arrived German
immigrants.26

Jane Bolin's grandfather, Abraham Bolin27 was a
community leader and reformer in his own right. He is
remembered as "a man of high principles."28 Born on
February 10, 1826 in Dover Plains, he grew up on Quaker
hill among Quakers, and was educated in a local country
district school. In 1855 he met and married Alice Ann

Lawrence,29 a Native American Poughkeepsie resident who was

 

Southern agriculture, among many reasons. This pattern entailed one
relative or a whole family moving to "check a place out" then
encouraging other kin and friends to migrate through word of mouth or
by letters. It is also noteworthy that many of the early Blacks in
Poughkeepsie also emigrated from the West Indies. See Joe William
Trotter, Jr., ed., The Great Migration in Historical Perspective
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); Johnson, "Migration," 6.

 

26 Johnson, "Migration," 6.

27 The elder Bolin's Christian name is at times spelled "Abram" and at
other times "Abraham." I have chosen the later spelling because that
appears on Gaius Bolin, Sr.'s "Vital Statistics" student form at
Williams College. He died April 18, 1910, two months before his wife
who died on June 21, 1910. Alumni Records, Gaius C. Bolin folder,
Alumni Office, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

 

28 His son remembers him with great pride in an interview. Dorothy W.
Thomson, "51 Years a Lawyer," Sunday New Yorker, November 24, 1943,
Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

29 It is quite possible that Alice Ann Lawrence was a woman of mixed
Native American and African American heritage; as well she may have
been a member of the Lawrence family, one of the old Dutchess County
Black families as listed in the "Colored" Directory of Poughkeepsie.
She and Abraham were married in 1855. Alice was born on February, 1836.
Bolin's 1990 Interview with Rudd; Alumni Records, Gaius C. Bolin
folder, Alumni Office, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts;
Poughkeepsie Sunday New Yorker, November 22, 1943.

 

 

educated in the public schools of New York City.30 They had
thirteen children, all of whom were born at 35 Clinton
Street in Poughkeepsie.31

The head of a large family, Abraham understood only
too well the benefits of self—sufficiency. He was an
independent businessman, who worked in the wholesale
vegetable business, and at various times as a farmer and
gardener like his father had done before him.32 But he had
also been a grocer, a meat market proprietor and a
livestock salesman.33 Later in his life he had become the

superintendent of the Poughkeepsie reservoir. His property

 

30 Although Jane Bolin identifies her paternal grandmother as "Native
American" in her interview with Jean Rudd, it is quite possible that
she may have been a woman of mixed Native American and African American
heritage and a member of the Lawrence family, another prominent
Dutchess County Black family. Her son, Gaius remembers her being "a
pretty little woman, tiny but wiry, who had long black hair." Dorothy
W. Thomson, "51 Years a Lawyer," Sunday New Yorker 22 November 1943,
Clipping File, Box 2; Interview with Rudd, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

31 Thomson, "51 Years a Lawyer."

 

32 His father had been a farmer in the town of Dover all his life, and
his maternal grandfather had been a stagecoach driver on the Albany
Post Road. Thomson, "51 Years a Lawyer."

33 During the period between 1880 and WW II, the most common type of
employment for Black women was as domestics and as servants, while many
Black men worked as day laborers or as porters and janitors in local
hotels and restaurants. The places of employment included the Hudson
River Boats, the lumber yard, the glass and cigar factories. A few,
according to the Oral Study, worked as chauffeurs and servants for the
wealthy families in the area, but there were also a number of Blacks
who were independently employed as barber, grocer, owner of the stove
store who also hauled ice, plumber, dry cleaner, milliner and
restaurant owner. Although there were very few traditional
professionals in the Black community, the community could count the
clergy, a doctor, a dentist, and a lawyer (Bolin) among their
professional class. They also counted among them a remarkable Black
woman who became a teacher of the handicapped after spending six years
in South Africa as a missionary with her husband. Mamiya and Kaurouma,
For Their Courage. See also Dennis Clark Dickerson, "Gaius Charles
Bolin: The First Black Graduate of Williams College," Williams Alumni
Review.

 

 

holdings, economic independence, and government position no
doubt elevated his standing in his community. But it was
his vision as a parent and community leader that
distinguished him in the annals of Poughkeepsie history.
Abraham Bolin worked very closely with Reverend Jacob
Thomas in the 18605 to erect the $6,000 edifice that was
Poughkeepsie's A.M.E. Zion church. Yet, his crusade for a
Black institution of higher learning proved to be his
biggest challenge.

Several times in the nineteenth century, Blacks and
their White allies tried to establish a black college in or
near New York State. In the early 18305 a black national
convention proposed to establish a black college in New
Haven, Connecticut. In the 18505 Frederick Douglass
assisted in the plan to establish an "industrial college"
in Rochester or within one hundred miles of Erie,
Pennsylvania. In 1859 and 1866 they hoped to transform the
abolitionist-oriented New York Central College in
McGrawville, near Cortland, New York, into a black college.
However, none of these proposals succeeded.34

In 1870, Abraham Bolin and eight other Hudson Valley
Black residents embarked on a crusade to found a college

for Black New Yorkers.35 These residents were absolutely

 

34 Carleton Mabee, "Toussaint College: A Proposed Black College For New
York State in the 1870's" Afro-Americans in New York Life and History
(Buffalo, NY: Afro-American Historical Association of the Niagara
Frontier, 1977) 25-35.

35 Ibid.

16

dissatisfied with the segregated schools available in such
Dutchess County cities as Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, Hudson,
and Catskill, and utterly discouraged by racial hostility
at such institutions as Eastman Business College and Vassar
College in Poughkeepsie. The mid- Hudson region (as in
Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Fishkill Landing, Hudson, Catskill,
and Kinderhook) already had several public schools for
Blacks, but they were on the elementary level.36 In 1870
several colleges in the state had still never admitted a
Black student. Eastman Business College, located in
Poughkeepsie on the Hudson River, refused to admit Blacks
as its president afterwards explained, because its many
southern students would not like it. According to the Ngw

York Times and the New York Freeman, by 1866, Eastman

 

 

College still excluded Blacks. The recently established
Vassar College, also located in Poughkeepsie, did not admit
Blacks.37 As late as 1900 a Vassar administrator declared
that "the conditions of life here are such" that we
"strongly advise" Negroes not to enter.38 Vassar announced
that it was ready to accept Blacks in 1934.39 Down the
Hudson from Poughkeepsie at West Point, the United States
Military Academy, though opened in 1802, never admitted a

Black cadet until May, 1870, when under the impact of

 

35 Ibid., 27.

37 New York Times, 10 February 1881; New York Freeman 12 June 1886.
Mabee, "Toussaint College."

33 w. E. B. DuBois, The College Bred Negro (Atlanta, 1900), 34.
39 New York Amsterdam News 22 December 1934.

 

 

 

 

Reconstruction, the Republican administration in Washington
directed that it do 50.40 J. W. Smith became the first
Black cadet at West Point. He was persecuted from the day
he entered to the day of his premature departure. Perhaps
the public debate over Smith's treatment at West Point had
motivated the black leaders of the mid-Hudson region to
push, even more aggressively, for higher educational
institutions.

Those signing the call for a Black college wished to
establish a higher institution of learning for the
residents of their communities.41 The proposed school was
called Toussaint L'Ouverture College, after the famous
Haitian revolutionary who founded the first Black Republic
in the New World. Abraham Bolin was named as one of the
school's trustees.42

In early 1871 the trustees and their supporters
arranged to have a local Republican Assemblyman introduce a
bill into the New York legislature to incorporate the

college. However the proposal received strong opposition

 

40 Mabee, "Toussaint College," 25—35.

41 The educational convention wished to create a higher school of
learning for its Black residents. And although not on the scale of
Vassar College's 200 acre allotment at founding, and $800,000 endowment
from Mathew Vassar alone, the convention decided modestly that the new
college should have 15 or more acres of ground, and $300,000 for
initial costs and endowment. Mabee, "Toussaint College," 27.

42 While such Black colleges as Howard, in Washington, D.C. and Lincoln
University, in Oxford, Pennsylvania, had a few Black trustees and no
Black trustees respectively, this proposed college had all Black
trustees, with the majority coming from Poughkeepsie. They were Isaac
Deyo (cartman and laborer), Abram Bolin (gardener and janitor) and
Charles Cooley (laborer). Dutchess, Orange, Columbia, Ulster and
Greene Counties. Mabee, "Toussaint College," 27.

IS

from many in New York's Black community. At the 1871 New
York Annual Conference of the A.M.E. Zion Church, the
Reverend William Butler of New York City, a former pastor
in Hudson and Poughkeepsie, and a most powerful personality
at the conference, objected strongly. "Let the colored
people of the state stand together and ask for equal school
rights," he said, "and they would get it. They wanted no
separate college."43 Like many other Black New Yorkers,
Butler believed that the Toussaint L'Ouverture College
would hinder their fight for integrated schools. The
proposed black college met strong opposition from within
the Black community. Many of the undecided argued that it
would undermine segregation. The A.M.E. Zion conference
refused to endorse the college. The symbolism of the
college's name no doubt excited their concerns. Bolin's
assurance that the college would be open to both Blacks and
Whites fell on deaf ears, and at the 1872 state Black
convention held in Troy, there was still no endorsement of
the college. Black New Yorkers did not offer the necessary
moral and financial support that such an institution
demanded; there was no active support from the major Black
denomination in the state or from the Black state
convention.44 A Poughkeepsie Republican newspaper appealed
for contributions for the proposed college from Whites.

The Daily Eagle said, "It is to be hoped that our people

 

 

43 Mabee, "Toussaint College," 30.
44 Mabee, "Toussaint College," 29—30.

will give this institution a helping hand, as it will go
far toward settling the vexed question of the mixture of
the races in our schools and colleges."45

The inequities imbedded in the state's segregated
public schools foretold what an all Black institution would
suffer. By the end of 1872 the crusade for the Toussaint
L'Ouverture College collapsed under the weight of prolonged
opposition. In the 18705 belief by both blacks and whites
in the practicability of educational integration helped to
prevent the creation of Toussaint College, and had
contributed ever since to preventing the establishment of a
black college in the state.46 Moreover, with the
ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment promising the equal
right to vote, New York State Blacks felt a certain impetus
to push for equal opportunity.47

In 1873, a state civil rights law allowed New York
youth, irrespective of race, to enroll in any publicly
supported school, thus ending separate education for
Poughkeepsie's Black residents.48 Abraham Bolin and his
fellow crusaders may not have succeeded in establishing a
Black college for the benefit of their children and
grandchildren, but their efforts certainly fueled the fight
for integration. Their efforts are therefore not to be

measured by a straight line from objective to result, but

 

45 Ibid.

46 Mabee, "Toussaint College," 32-33.
47 Ibid., 26.

48 Ibid.

20

as a struggle with all of its complexities and compromises,
gains and losses. Abraham Bolin's participation in this
crusade reflects the depth of his racial pride and the
strength of his commitment to the uplift of his community.49

This commitment to community leadership, inherited or
bestowed, was not lost on the next generation of Bolins.
What the elder Bolin had accomplished with only a country
district school education was enough to inspire his son,
Gaius Charles, to pursue a classical education and become a
man of the professional class. "I always wanted to be [a
lawyer], from a kid," he once told an interviewer.50 And,
true to his word he became a lawyer, a very prominent
lawyer, one of two in the town of Poughkeepsie. The other
was a white man.

Gaius Charles was one of thirteen children born to
Alice and Abraham Bolin. He was born on September 10, 1864
in Poughkeepsie, "in a house on North Clinton Street in
which the Bolin family had lived for nearly a hundred
years."51 The 1873 legislation which ended segregated

education for Poughkeepsie Blacks, enabled Gaius Bolin to

 

49 When he died in April, 1910, several organizations, including
Ebenezer Baptist Church, the Household of Ruth, and Court of Calanthe,
paid tribute to him. His funeral was held at is Clinton Street
residence and presided over by a White Episcopal priest and a Black
Baptist minister. Mabee, "Toussaint College," 26-32; Poughkeepsie
Daily Eagle, 20 April 1910; April 21, 1910; New York Age, 28 April
1910, Dickerson, "First Black Graduate," Williams Alumni Review.

 

 

 

 

50 Unlike his older brothers, George and Albert, who worked as hotel
waiters, and an older sister, Cora, who labored as a domestic, Gaius
demanded more and took the necessary steps to achieve it. Thomson, "51
Years a Lawyer"; Dickerson, "First Black Graduate."

51 Thomson, "51 Years a Lawyer."

2|

attend Poughkeepsie's public schools. Before attending the
Poughkeepsie public schools he attended a Black church
school privately run by Professor Livington.52 Gaius Bolin
was educated in the racially integrated public schools of
Poughkeepsie, and graduated from high school on June 29,
1883, in a class of twenty—three.53 He remembers it being a
great honor to be a graduate of Poughkeepsie High School
and the graduates "having no trouble obtaining the best
jobs to be had in the mercantile world, the banks and as
school teachers and in....the professions."54 However, with
all the prestige that his diploma bestowed, it was still
necessary for him to study for two additional years in a
private school to acquire more Latin and the full two years
of Greek required for entrance into college. He therefore
enrolled in, and in 1885 graduated from, Professor John R.
Leslie's Select Classical School in Poughkeepsie.55

At the suggestion of his high school principal, Samuel

W. Buck, who had graduated from Williams College, and with

 

52 Ibid.

53 On his commencement day Bolin delivered an oration which inspired
the Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle to comment on his intelligence and to say
that his commencement performance demonstrated the desirability of
integrated education. Dennis C. Dickerson, "Success Story.. .With a
Difference," Williams Alumni Review, Fall 1979.

 

 

54 He remembers the graduating exercises being a grand affair, it being
held at the old Collingwood Opera House on Market Street in downtown
Poughkeepsie. Thomson, "51 Years a Lawyer."

55 Up to 1870 few New York State Blacks had attended college; few were
adequately prepared academically; few had the necessary funds, and few
colleges would admit them anyway. Black intellectual achievement was
little reported in magazines, newspapers, or school texts, and thus was
kept out of popular consciousness. Carleton Mabee, "Toussaint College:
A Proposed Black College for New York State in the 18705," Afro-
Americans in New York Life and History, January 1977, 25-35.

 

22

the support of his parents, Bolin applied to Williams
College, passed the entrance examination, and entered the
freshman class of 1885.56 In a 1909 letter to a college
classmate Bolin paid special tribute to his parents "for
the sacrifice they made to help me through Williams."57

In his study The College Bred Negro, W. E. B. DuBois

 

reported that 2,331 Blacks had been graduated from the
nation's colleges and universities between 1826 and 1899.
The majority of these graduates had earned their
baccalaureate degrees after 1865 from such Black
institutions as Lincoln, Fisk, Wilberforce, and Howard.
However, approximately 390 of these graduates or a full 16
percent had received their education at a variety of
predominantly White colleges and universities including
Amherst, Bowdoin, Yale, and Oberlin.58

In 1885 Williams College followed the precedent set by
these institutions and admitted its first Black student
when it admitted Gaius Charles Bolin.59 He recalled having

"four beautiful years" at Williams where he formed lasting

 

56 He was followed one year later by his brother Livingsworth Wilson,
and in 1948 by his grandson (his son's child) Lionel. Bolin Papers;
Dickerson, "First Black Graduate"; Thomson, "51 Years a Lawyer."

57 Class of Eighty—Nine of Williams, Twentieth. . . Report,
(Williamsiana), 12.

58 W. E. Burghardt DuBois, ed., The College Bred Negro, Atlanta
University Studies (Atlanta, 1900), 14, 29—30, 38-39; Dickerson, "The
First Black Graduate."

59 In the three years after Gaius's entrance two other Blacks, Bolin's
brother Livingsworth Wilson Bolin of the Class of 1890, and George
Lightfoot of the Class of 1891, became Williams undergraduates. These
Williams alumni encouraged other Black students to matriculate at their
alma mater. Ibid.

 

 

23

friendships with his White classmates.60 To his classmates
he was "Old Charlie Bole". Fifty years after he had left
Williams he could still recall the names of the many
classmates "who made a rendezvous" of his room, and "the
glorious times" they had there.61

Upon graduation in June, 1889, Bolin returned to
Poughkeepsie armed with his Bachelor of Arts degree, but no
job. Poughkeepsie had integrated its public schools, but
the vast majority of Blacks were still relegated to jobs as
laborers, domestics, and janitors. For a year after his
return to Poughkeepsie Bolin worked in his father's produce
business. However, he never gave up his lifelong ambition
to become a lawyer, and in 1890 Fred E. Ackerman, a local
lawyer, gave him the opportunity to fulfill his ambition.
He read the law with Ackerman for two years, passed the
bar, and in 1892 was admitted to the General Term of the
Supreme Court in Brooklyn, New York, to practice law. He
also joined the Dutchess County Bar Association.62 He
became the first Black lawyer in Poughkeepsie. He

continued to work with Ackerman for the next three years,

 

60 His experience at Williams was a far cry from his daughter Jane's
experience at another New England institution. Her reminisces were of
sad times and isolation. Like her, he did not live in the dormitory
during his freshman year, but with a Black family until his brother
Livingsworth enrolled the following year when they became roommates at
3 South College Hall. Ibid.; Fifty Years After: A Report of the Class
of 1889, Williams College, 6-10.

61 Fifty Years After: A Report of the Class of 1889, Williams College,
6-10.

62 Dickerson, "First Black Graduate," 6.

 

24

gaining the necessary experience before establishing his
own law practice in 1895.

He had only been in private practice for two years
when an important biographical directory of prominent
Dutchess County residents listed him as "a talented and
enterprising young lawyer" who had gained a reputation for
"fair dealing" and "devotion to the interests of his
clients."63 He served in the community for over half a
century, and assumed the presidency of the Dutchess County
Bar Association the year before his death in 1946. He was
the first African American to be so honored. But his
practice was more than work. It was his passion. He
recalled in later years that "Nobody ever enjoyed making a
living, either with his hands or his head, more than I've
enjoyed practicing law in the city of Poughkeepsie."64
Although he described his law practice, which was of a
general nature, as "the usual experience of a country
lawyer," it was anything but usual. He handled individual
and corporate cases, of every stripe, many times working as
co—counsel with white lawyers throughout Dutchess County.
Moreover, his prominence in the Poughkeepsie community
transcended race. And, although Blacks were included among

his clients, the vast majority of his clients were Whites.65

 

53 Ibid., 7; Commemorative Biographical Record, 116-117.
64 Thomson, "51 Years a Lawyer."

65 Interview with Jean Rudd, Box 1, Bolin Papers; Dickerson, "First
Black Graduate."

25

Merely utilizing the expertise of a Black lawyer did
not absolve many of Bolin's White clients from racial
prejudice. They had simply redrawn their circle of
acceptability and made of Bolin an exception to their
prejudicial assumptions, all the while maintaining their
racial biases. Jane recalls going to a barber shop, after
being turned away from the beauty parlor in one of the
leading department stores in Poughkeepsie, to get her hair
cut and being told that they did not cut "colored" people's
hair. The woman who turned her away was a client of her
father's. Not surprisingly the woman did not remain a
client for very long. As Jane recalled, "I don't know
after that incident with me how long he permitted her to be
his client."66

Gaius Bolin never let professional pragmatism
compromise his commitment to activism. He was an advocate
"actively protesting racial prejudice and advancing the
rights of Blacks."67 When Vassar’s President Henry Noble
MacCracken told a "darkie joke" while addressing Anna
Bolin’s high school assembly in Poughkeepsie, Gaius Bolin
wasted no time in denouncing the blatant disrespect for
Poughkeepsie's black residents.68 In 1931 he was one of

seven Poughkeepsie residents who formed the local branch of

 

66 She had her hair cut at a third barbershop operated by an Italian
immigrant, who spoke very little English. He continued to cut her hair
for the remainder of her residence in Poughkeepsie. Interview with
Rudd, 35, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

67 Dickerson, "First Black Graduate," 9.

68 Interview with Jean Rudd, 37; Dickerson, "First Black Graduate," 9.

26

the NAACP. He was also active county-wide in the NAACP; in
1932 he served on the executive committee of its Dutchess
County branch. He was also very vocal against the
discriminatory practices of the Poughkeepsie YMCA and YWCA,
Poughkeepsie's employment discrimination in the public
schools and other government agencies such as the post
office and police agencies.69 His negotiation through this
labyrinth of racial custom and professional ethics,
magnified as it was in this small predominantly white town,
bespeaks the precarious position of early Black
professionals whose practice was not confined to the Black
community.

Gaius Bolin was a staunch supporter of New York
Republican Governor Theodore Roosevelt,70 who valued his
loyalty.71 In April 1899 Roosevelt appointed Bolin to the

Board of Managers of the Pan American Exposition to be held

 

59 Ibid.

70 He was active in local party politics and tried to protect
Roosevelt's interests and warn him about his opponents. When party
bosses proposed a resolution that strongly endorsed the reelection of
William McKinley as president, but offered only mild support of
Roosevelt's renomination as governor, Bolin informed the governor. He
also apprised the governor of the underhanded dealings of these same
party bosses who were attaching amendments to Poughkeepsie's new city
charter, which would personally benefit the school superintendent but
go against the wishes of the people of Poughkeepsie. He told the
governor that "...the Hunter politicians are for these amendments, but
the people are against them, and your honest friends here not only for
the good of the city, but for your interest as well, hope and trust
that you will not put your name to this bill..." Dickerson, "First
Black Graduate," 8.

71 In deference to Bolin's displeasure with amendments made to
Poughkeepsie's new city Charter, the governor had the offensive parts
removed at Bolin's request. Ibid.

27

in Buffalo in 1901.72 Yet, he never used his own success to
gauge Black progress. He understood his good fortune and
the role benefactors played in his life. He, therefore,
used his own success and visibility to bring attention and
resolution to the plight of Blacks who were less
politically connected. Gaius Bolin left an impressive
legacy that remained a model for both his children and the
larger community. When he died in April 1946, at the age
of 81, a Poughkeepsie newspaper praised him for his
devotion "to the Negro race." He was "fearless," said the
article, "in advancing their cause and protecting their
rights."73 In his death, explained another newspaper, "the
city loses a respected member of an old Poughkeepsie family
and an outstanding citizen," who "can take with him a large
share of credit for the progress that has been made, on the

local scene."74

 

72 Gaius Bolin was particularly proud of the New York State Building
whose construction the commission had authorized. Because of his
service on the Board of Managers, the Buffalo Historical Society, which
gained ownership of the state structure, made him an honorary life
member. Ibid.

73 Dickerson, "The First Black Graduate," 11.

74 Untitled newspaper article without title or author. Clipping File,
Box 3, Bolin Papers.

28

Chapter 2
On Her Own: The Years at Wellesley and Yale

“Outside the Brotherhood
[sisterhood] we were outside
history; but inside of it
they didn’t see us."75

The Bolin's prominence and community leadership had
spanned several generations, and Jane Matilda Bolin. was
poised to carry the torCh. Her prominence and leadership
as a citizen and as a professional was therefore no real
surprise to anyone who knew the Bolin family legacy. She
was primed for success at home and at school, although the
lessons were not the same.

At home there were always books and newspapers from
which to choose. Her father subscribed to two Poughkeepsie
newspapers, "the morning paper and the evening paper and
the New York City paper - the New York Herald Tribune." He
also subscribed to the Crisis of the NAACP, the Chicago

Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, and the Baltimore Afro-

 

 

American.76

 

" Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (Vintage International, 1952), 402.

 

75 Interview with Rudd, Box 1, Bolin Papers. The Chicago Defender
founded by Robert Abbott in 1905 became in 1956 the 52nd Black
newspaper to become a daily. With its published letters, news, and
employment ads, the Defender was largely responsible for the "Great
Northern Drive" of southern Black people. The Pittsburgh Courier,
first published in 1910, was headed by Robert Lee Vann who guided the
paper to a commanding position in the 19305. Some of the highlights of
its record include the launching of a self-respect program tied in with
the protest against the racial caricatures in the "Amos 'n' Andy" radio
show, and an all—out campaign to give Blacks fuller recognition in the
armed forces. The Baltimore Afro-American was born in 1892 out of the
union of three small church organs: the Ledger, a church and community
newspaper run by Dr. George Bragg, pastor of Baltimore's St. James

 

 

 

29

 

 

She loved to read, and was encouraged to do so from an
early age. There were no children in the new neighborhood
to which they had moved, so she spent the bulk of her time
reading and studying. Before she was old enough to attend
school her sister would borrow books from the library for
her to read. "I can remember learning how to read before I
even went to school," she recalled in an interview.77
"[S]he [her mother] used to ask me to read the newspaper to
her. And I remember she would tell me to read just the
headlines or she would tell me whether she wanted me to
read the whole article."78 Her mother had a prolonged
illness and died when Jane was just eight, but the time
they spent together, and the memories they created, were
obviously a source of great strength for her as she grew.
She felt pampered as a child, one who could always get her
way. This self-determination was nurtured by her family,
particularly her father, and would empower her in the face
of discouragement later in life. As she explains, "I
suppose I carried that over to the outside that I, you

know, always wanted my way so even though people tried to

 

Episcopal Church, The Sunday School Helper, started by John H. Murphy,
Sunday school superintendent a the St. John A.M.E. Church, as a vehicle
for uniting state Sunday schools, and the Afro-American, published by
the Reverend William Alexander, pastor of Sharon Baptist Church, to
advertise his church and community enterprises. See generally,
Armistead Pride and Clint Wilson, A History of the Black Press
(Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1997.)

77 Interview with Jean Rudd, 2.
79 Ibid., 3.

 

 

 

3O

discourage me from going into the law, I was just

determined to go because that's what I wanted."79

 

As a young girl Jane had always enjoyed the
stimulating conversations that filled her home, and
sometimes entered into the debates surrounding the "Negro
Question." At the height of the intense debate over
liberal arts education versus industrial education, which
came to focus on W. E. B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington
with their divergent ideologies, it was quite clear to the
young Jane just which side of the educational divide her
family stood.80 "I shall never forget," she later recalled,
"that he [father] reminded me that it was W. E. B. DuBois
and not Booker T. Washington we had admired in our home and
that I was never to hesitate to try to achieve any ambition
because of my color."81

She attended the Kindergarten Morse School before
entering the Poughkeepsie Public School system, where she
was an honor student. With great pride, she professes, "I
was an 'A' student all the way through high school - used

to be on the A honor roll, which was published in the

 

79 Interview with Rudd, 73, emphasis mine.

80 Washington, founder and principal of Tuskegee Institute, was the
foremost advocate of industrial education, while DuBois, who was
educated at Fisk and Harvard, and who taught at Atlanta Univeristy,
advocated higher education for the so-called "talented tenth" of the
race. Willard Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-
1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 266.

 

81 Speech presented in honor of the pioneer role of Dr. W. E. B. DuBois
by Schomburg Center, in "Speeches" Folder, Box 3, Bolin Papers,
Schomburg Center, New York City Public Library.

31

Poughkeepsie newspapers every month."82 School was a mile
away from her home, and since there was no school lunch
program at the time, she went home for lunch.83 She
therefore walked four miles, a mile each way, to and from
school every day. Her fox terrier, Prince made the trip
with her each way. As she remembers, "He was the talk of
the neighborhood because he walked me to school every
day...And at quarter of 12 when we got out of school, he
was there to meet me. He'd go back home, and somehow knew
when I was supposed to come out of school again because at
3 o'clock he was back at school waiting for me."84

She graduated with an Academic Diploma in Classical
subjects from Poughkeepsie High School in 1924. In high
school she loved Latin and English, but her dearest memory
of high school was her English teacher, Lucy E. Jackson.
Mrs. Jackson shared her personal collection of books with
Jane, and suggested books for her to read from her father's
library. Sadly, she recalled that "all the education I
had, she was my only beloved teacher."85 Her Poughkeepsie
high school diploma earned her admission to Wellesley
College a generation after her father's was deemed
inadequate for admission to Williams College. There was no

question in Jane's, or her family's mind that she would be

 

82 Interview with Rudd, 4.

83 Her father got his first car in 1920, but as she remembers, he never
learned to drive. It is very likely that he had a driver. She did not
learn to drive until she was sixteen. Interview with Rudd, 37.

84 Interview with Rudd, 4.
85 Ibid.

32

attending college. She was, after all, the youngest in
this professional household where education was celebrated.
Her brother, Gaius Charles Junior had by then begun his
studies at New York Law School, and was positioned to
practice law with their father in Poughkeepsie. Her two
older sisters had completed high school. Ivy had become a
teacher, and Anna had gotten married.

She chose Wellesley College in Massachusetts over
Vassar College, which was two blocks from her home, for
what she considered obvious reasons; "One because it was
near home and the president was a Southerner."86 President
McCracken had years before told a "darkie" joke at her
sister's school assembly. Her father had written a
scathing letter to McCracken which was never acknowledged.
She felt that she could not in good conscience be
affiliated with the institution. But even if she could,
the reality was that Vassar did not admit African
Americans. She always expected to attend college, and had
sent away for catalogues from several women's colleges.
She then decided that Wellesley was for her and applied to
only Wellesley. She was accepted, and at "sixteen years
old, sensitive and idealistic, first time away from the
family, one of two Black freshmen who were the first Black

students for some years - this was I in 1924."87

 

85 Interview with Rudd, 42.

87 "Wellesley in My Life," in Wellesley After-Images, Box 1, Bolin
Papers.

 

33

 

 

Founded in the nineteenth century by Henry Fowle
Durant, Wellesley was one of the few colleges, which
responded to the need for improved education for women;
"education for more than carrying out housewifely duties."88
Durant believed that if given a chance, "women can do the
work."89 Jane agreed, as did her father who supported her
decision to matriculate at Wellesley. Her father and
brother drove her to Wellesley, and she remembers how
difficult it was when they left. She recalls, "I can
remember when my father was leaving how I clung to him and
cried. I just couldn't imagine being without him. He also
had tears in his eyes."90

This bond between Jane and her father is somewhat
typical of fathers and daughters. Yet, the same cannot be
said for his relationship with his other two daughters who

were twelve and seventeen at the time of their mother's

 

88 Oberlin College, in 1833, was the first institution of higher
education to admit all students regardless of race or sex. Although,
women here took a shortened literary course in accordance with the
belief that their minds could not assimilate the same fare as men's and
the belief that their education better prepared them for intelligent
motherhood. In 1837, with the founding of Mount Holyoke, the concept
of improved education for women took hold, and later developments in
the nineteenth century saw the opening of Vassar (1865), Smith and
Wellesley (1875) and Radcliffe in 1979. Henry Fowle Durant, the
founder of Wellesley was committed to the Christian education of women,
but claimed that "the real meaning of the Higher Education of Women"
was "revolt." See Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Alma Mater: Design and
Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteen-Century
Beginnings to the 19305 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1984), especially chapter 3; also, D. Kelly Weisberg, "Barred From the
Bar: Women and Legal Education in the United States, 1870-1890," in D.
Kelly Weisberg, ed., Women and the Law: A Social Historical
Perspective, Volume II (Massachusetts: Schenkman, 1982), 246-248.

89 Writings Folder, Box 3, Bolin Papers.
90 Interview with Rudd, 6.

 

 

 

 

34

 

 

 

 

death. This might suggest an existing bond with their
mother that could not be replaced by their father after her
death. The eldest daughter, Anna, eloped while still quite
young, much to her father's disappointment. He apparently
disapproved of the man she married. According to Jane, he
was not wrong in his assessment, for the man never took
care of Anna or their son, who grew up with the Bolins
after Anna died when the boy was still quite young.91

Ivy, whom, Jane describes as having a different
personality than hers, was very independent, and much more
defiant as a daughter. Jane remembers that their father
did not approve of them using cosmetics. "Apparently he
thought that decent women--girls-—didn't use cosmetics."92
However, Ivy did not share their father's sentiments, and
would sneak around and put on face powder and lipstick.
But, according to Jane, "She didn't get out of the house
fast enough one day on her way back to school and he saw
her with the powder and the lipstick on and he made her
come in the house and wash her face."93

While in college, she, like all other students, had to
get permission from a parent for two people to act as
chaperones in their absence. Jane did not know anyone in
Boston, so when two nice ladies came from Boston to visit

her after hearing that she was there alone away from

 

91 Anna's son died of cancer when he was sixteen. Interview with Rudd,
40-41.

92 Interview with Rudd, 40.
93 Interview with Rudd, 40-41.

35

family, she immediately asked the ladies if they would be
her chaperones and they accepted. She then sent their
names to her father and asked him to approve these ladies
with the college Dean as chaperones for her in case she
wanted to go to Boston, which was 16 miles away from
Wellesley. Her father's response was curt. She recalls,
"My father wrote me a letter telling me that he did not
send me to college for a social life, he sent me to college
to study, and he did not approve of these chaperones."94 It
is interesting that although she subsequently wrote "a
whining letter" to her sister Ivy who said, "go anyway, go
anyplace you want anyway....You're a big girl now," she
could not bring herself to defy her father.95 She was far
away from home and from her father, but his rules and sense
of what was right and appropriate still guided her
decisions. So, she never went into Boston for any parties
or any social life or even to go to the symphony until her
sophomore year, at which time the students were not
required to have chaperones.96

She remembers her college years at Wellesley being sad
ones where she was essentially ignored outside of the
classroom. As a woman she was welcomed to be part of the
academic life of Wellesley, but as an African American she

was often excluded from its social life. "I felt largely

 

94 Ibid.
95 Ibid.
95 Ibid.

36

ignored," she said, "although I had an excellent education,
I felt ignored socially."97 Historian Evelyn Brooks
Higginbotham reminds us that "in societies where racial
demarcation is endemic to their sociocultural fabric and
heritage - to their laws and economy, to their
institutionalized structures and discourses, and to their
epistemologies and everyday customs — gender identity is
inextricably linked to and even determined by racial
identity."98 There was one other African American student
who entered when she did. They were the first two African
Americans to have entered Wellesley in several years.
"And, of course, typically, they put us in the same room,"
but as she recalls, they did not like each other very much
so after the first year they each moved to separate
dormitories.99

Wellesley may have cheated her of the social component
so important to a student's college experience. But, she
found fulfillment with other students from Harvard,
Dartmouth, Amherst and Williams who would all go to Boston
for parties.100 Wellesley was committed in theory to the
education of women, but "racial demarcation" was clearly

endemic to its sociocultural fabric (community of women)

 

97 Wellesley Image; Interview with Rudd, 6.

 

98 Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, "African-American Women's History and
the Metalanguage of Race." Signs 17, no. 2 (Winter 1992), 255.

99 By her junior year at Wellesley, there were two African American
transferees, but no incoming freshmen for the four years she was there.
Interview with Rudd; Wellesley Images.

100 Interview with Rudd, 6.

 

37

 

 

 

 

 

which did not fully embrace Black women. Ingrained race
prejudice preempted possible unity among women. Bolin's
experience evinces a huge gap between the rhetoric and
reality of Wellesley's commitment to equality. This calls
to mind the situation at one of the schools in Dutchess
County which did not accept Black students for fear of
insulting the sensibilities of their southern students.101

Jane Bolin was an honor student, yet she was rejected
for membership in student groups. They slipped an unsigned
notice surreptitiously under her door during the night.
Even the most routine activity of taking meals was
problematic. Students were apparently assigned to tables
at dinner but at all other meals they sat anywhere,
provided a table was filled before another table was
started. As she remembers, if she or her roommate were
sitting at an unfilled table, "the Southern students would
come in the dining room, see this and ostentatiously walk
out and stand outside the door peeking in until our table
was filled."102

Bolin was unruffled by these petty slights, but was

shocked by the fact that "no one in authority, though

 

101 Discussed in Chapter 1. Moving with the winds of change many
northern schools embraced the idea of opening their doors to Black
students (however few), but these same schools apparently did not take
any initiative in creating a truly inclusive environment. The concern
appears to be more with the courtesy for the custom of their southern
students, rather than compliance with their school charter. Mabee,
"Toussaint College."

102 Wellesley in My Life, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

 

38

 

observing this, interceded in any way."103 Those in
authority were no less guilty of discriminatory behavior.

A French teacher had apparently asked another Black student
to play the role of an "Aunt Jemina" type figure, bandanna
and all, in a charity fundraising skit at the college. The
stereotypical image of Aunt Jemina depicts the Black woman
in perpetual servility. And as passive, longsuffering, and
submissive, Aunt Jemina (like Mammy before her) came to
symbolize for whites a prototype of "acceptable black
womanhood."104 Unable to discern any positive academic,
literary or political value in the French teacher's
request, Bolin went to the French teacher and "remonstrated
vociferously" on her classmate's behalf.105 This resulted
in the withdrawal of the request for an Aunt Jemina
character. But, as Bolin later recalled, it was impossible
to withdraw the deep feelings of hurt brought on by such
"insensitive protestations and wondrous lack of

understanding by a teacher of young people."106 Such

 

103 Ibid.

104 Mammy became a national symbol of perfect domesticity, immortalized
by Hollywood, at the very time that millions of black women were
leaving the cotton fields of the South in search of employment in
Northern urban areas. Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female
Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
1985), 165. See also, bell hooks, Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and
Feminism (Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press, 1992), 83-85;

Cheryl Thurber aptly points out that such myths offered a way of
praising the past and dealing with a younger generation of blacks that
was viewed as "uppity." See, Cheryl Thurber, "The Development of the
Mammy Image and Mythology," in Virginia Bernhard, et al, eds., Southern
Women: Histories and Identities (Columbia, Missouri: University of
Missouri Press, 1992), 108.

105 Wellesley in My Life, Box 1, Bolin Papers.
106 Ibid.

 

 

 

 

 

39

responsibility characterized who she was. She had refused
to celebrate, thereby challenging, a false construction of
Black womanhood as she had come to know it. This episode
resonates with, what White sees as "the black woman's
perennial concern with image, a justifiable concern born of
centuries of vilification."107

Bolin should not have been surprised at Wellesley's
indifference on the occasion of her 1939 judicial
appointment, but she was. Her judicial appointment was
given wide publicity. With the publicity of her
appointment letters and telegrams came by the hundreds from
people, mostly strangers, from all over the world,
including her law school, high school and even grade school
teachers. Yet, "not a single note from teacher, president,
dean, house mother or anyone....who was at Wellesley during
my four years."108 In 1974, she accepted an invitation to
submit a memoir for Wellesley's Centennial. Almost a half
century had passed since she graduated from Wellesley. Yet
she was "saddened and maddened" to recall many of her
Wellesley experiences. But, she did. The result was a
scathing account of the racism she felt was "part of
Wellesley's history," that "should be recorded fully, if
only as a benighted pattern to which determinedly it will

never return."109 It took this painful exposure (turning

 

107 White, Ar'n't I a Woman, 165.
108 Wellesley in My Life, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

109 Ironically, today Wellesley boasts an impressively large population
of Black women which engenders a forum for debates about the limitation

 

 

4o

 

 

her insides out) to prick the conscience of one of those
"in authority" who had sat idly by while Jane endured the
misery that was her college years at Wellesley. Louise
Overacker, a former professor of hers at Wellesley, wrote,
"what I never suspected were the slights to which you were
subjected and the loneliness that lay beneath that
composed, self-reliant exterior."llO

What this white woman never suspected was the degree
to which Bolin's "composed, self-reliant exterior" was just
that — an exterior — consciously constructed by Bolin to
protect her vulnerability. Further, had her professor been
more aware of the only two Black students in her class, she
might have understood why in the intervening years Bolin
never accepted invitations to return to Wellesley. Darlene
Clark Hine suggests that because of racial animosity "black
women as a rule developed a politics of silence and adhered
to a cult of secrecy, a culture of dissemblance, to protect

the sanctity of the inner aspects of their lives."111

 

of the sisterhood of women. She was so intent on her words remaining
intact that on several occasions she informed the editor that she would
not approve anything other than her complete submission, (the editors
were apparently concerned with space and wanted to edit/shorten her
essay.) Ibid.

110 Louise Overacker to Jane Bolin, 10 September 1974, Box 1, Bolin
Papers.

111 The dynamics of dissemblance involved creating the appearance of
disclosure or openness about themselves and their feelings, while
actually remaining enigmatic. The development of the culture of
dissemblance may have been influenced by rape and the threat of rape,
but as Hine suggests, and as Bolin demonstrated, dissemblance certainly
facilitated mental survival in a hostile environment. Darlene Clark
Hine, "Rape and the Inner Lives of Southern Black Women: Thoughts on
the Culture of Dissemblance," in Virginia Bernhard, Betty Brandon,
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Theda Perdue, ed., Southern Women: Histories
and Identities (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992), 182-183.

 

 

4]

Personal experience had taught Bolin that at Wellesley
there was no sisterhood upon which she, as a Black woman,
could depend. She therefore constructed a veneer solid
enough to withstand the onslaught on her identity as a
Black woman.

Bolin had borne a burden borne by many other black
students, male and female, attending white institutions at
the turn of the twentieth century. The weight of that
burden is only surpassed by the frequency of its
occurrence. For William Hastie, eminent legal scholar and
"unsung hero of the civil rights revolution," superior
performance and a winning personality did not preclude
bigoted inconsideration and social ostracism at Amherst.112
Hastie was president of Phi Beta Kappa, valedictorian of
the Amherst class of 1925, and star track athlete who ran
everything from a ten-second 100-yard dash up to the half
mile event. His competence in mathematics and physics so
far outdistanced his classmates that often times he was the
only student discussing such topics as Einstein and the
theory of functions with his professor. Despite his
excellence of mind, "innate gentility and impeccable
manners" he was snubbed by the fraternities at Amherst.113
In Jonathan Rusch's estimation, "Hastie's only discernible

shortcoming, in fact, was that he was Black."114 In his

 

112 Jonathan J. Rusch, "William H. Hastie and the Vindication of Civil
Rights," Howard Law Journal 21 (1978): 750-757,

113 Ibid.
114 Ibid., 314.

42

 

study of the Black elite, Willard Gatewood observes that
even at Oberlin College, with its celebrated role in the
Abolition movement and "probably the alma mater of more
aristocrats of color than any other white institution,"
black students were never treated the same as whites. He
concedes, however, that the atmosphere was probably freer
of prejudice than at virtually any other predominantly
white institution in the country.115 The real significance
of many of these white institutions may well be that they
traded in a void created by the historical indifference to
racial inequality.

Wellesley was founded on the very noble principle of
equality and a dream to cultivate an environment where
women could pursue their goals without restriction. Yet,
within a half-century of its founding the principle was
being eroded in an environment tarnished by the glare of
social segregation. Bolin's problems at Wellesley went
well beyond the social constraints of campus life.

Bolin admits to being a very religious child while
growing up in Poughkeepsie. She and her brother and
sisters went to Sunday school at St. Paul's Episcopal
Church, although she was the only one who was baptized and
confirmed. Her brother and sisters, according to her,
didn't care to be confirmed in the religion.116 She admits

to being an observant Episcopalian until she went to

 

115 Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color, 251, 268.
116 Interview with Rudd, 29.

 

43

 

Wellesley and followed her practice of attending early
morning communion. One morning while she knelt at the
communion rail waiting to partake in communion the priest
bypassed her while serving the wafer. When she did not
excuse herself from the ritual, she remembers the priest
making a big production of wiping all around the rim of the
silver chalice for several seconds with his napkin, clearly
in an attempt to indulge the other communicants. That
marked the end of her church attendance, not only while she
was in college, but for the rest of her life. "If that was
Christianity," she thought, "the practice of Christianity,
it was not for me."117

Wellesley provided her with a lifetime of discouraging
experiences, but she regards the following experience "the
sharpest and ugliest memory" of her Wellesley days. In her
senior year during a mandatory conference with her guidance
counselor, she was asked about her post-graduation plans.
When she informed her guidance counselor of her intention
to study law, she remembers the counselor throwing up her
hands in disbelief and telling her that there was little
opportunity for women in law and absolutely none for a
"colored" one, and surely she should consider teaching.118
Despite the counselor's obvious presumption, her response

arguably betrays an element of reason. Teaching was

 

117 Interview with Rudd, 29.

118 "Speech presented in honor of the pioneer role of Dr. W. E. B. Du
Bois by Schomburg Center," Box 3, Bolin Papers; Wellesley in My Life.

 

44

 

virtually the only profession open to Black women well into
the twentieth century. Black women who sought a college
education were often motivated by the serious need for
teachers in the black communities. They were also
motivated by their desire to avoid domestic service which
was their most frequent alternative. However, inasmuch as
teaching was considered the vocational choice for Black
women, many Black women's college education took them far
afield into unchartered professions.119

Eva Bowles, the first Black woman on the staff of the
Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) wrote in 1923 in

the Opportunity that "Altho most of the 30,074 Negro women

 

in the professional world are teachers, there is an ever
increasing group entering the world of law, medicine,
nursing and business."120 In 1910 there were only two Black
women lawyers. It was indeed a very bleak picture for
Black women wanting to enter the legal profession, a
picture that did not change much by the 19405 when there
were only fifty-seven Black women lawyers in the entire

United States.121 In 1872, Charlotte E. Ray was the

 

119 Jeanne Noble, "The Higher Education of Black Women in the Twentieth
Century," in John Mack Faragher and Florence Howe, eds., Women and
Higher Education in American History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988),
87-106. See also, Hine, Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and
Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890-1950 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1989) and Stephanie Shaw, What a Woman Ought To Do
and Be: Black Professional Women Workers During the Jim Crow Era
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996.)

 

 

 

120 As quoted in Gerda Lerner, ed., Black Women in White America: A
Documentary History (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 332. In 1910
there were two women lawyers, probably Charlotte Ray, and Mary Ann
Shadd, both of whom graduated in the 1872 and 1883.

121 Morello, The Invisible Bar, 194-210.

 

 

 

45

country's first and only Black woman lawyer. One author
said of Ray: "Her special endowments make her one of the
best lawyers on corporations in the country; her eloquence
is commendable for her sex in the courtroom, and her legal
advice is authoritative."122 As a result of prejudice,
however, she was unable to obtain sufficient legal
business, and was forced to relinquish her practice in the
District of Columbia for a teaching position the very year
she was admitted to practice law.123

Such was the reality which may have informed the
counsellor's query of Bolin's ambitions for a career in
law. But her blatant discouragement indulged rather than
challenged the nature and existence of the institutional
order of things. For the young Bolin, however, this was a
limitation she would not accept. Using her father’s
prominence as a point of reference, she informed her
counsellor that she expected the same future that any other
aspiring lawyer might. Growing up in a professional
household had clearly influenced her construction of what
her reality was supposed to be. Willard Gatewood's study
of the Black elite suggests a demonstrated continuity in
educational achievement among upper-class Blacks. He
maintains that "a considerable correlation existed between

upper-class status and educational achievement in the black

 

122 As quoted in Morello, The Invisible Bar, 146.

123 Dewaran M. Johnson, "The Contribution of Black Women to America,"
in Marianna W. Davis, ed., The Contributions of Black Women to America,
Vol. I (Columbia, South Carolina: Kenday Press, 1982), 431.

 

 

46

 

community in the forty years following Reconstruction, as
it did in previous generations" essentially because
literate Blacks reinforced their claims to positions at the
top of the class structure by "perpetuating traditions of
educational achievement."124

Bolin's insistence on a career in law, as opposed to
one in teaching, articulates her own re—configuring of the
Black woman's public space. It also calls attention to the
multiformity of Black women's consciousness-—for at the
turn of the century not all Black women aspired to be
teachers, and not all Black women became teachers. She
dared to transgress the script of Black woman's
professional space at the turn of the century, not because
of an indifference to a mission of "racial uplift," but

precisely because of it.125 She confirmed this in 1937 at

 

124 We should not be too eager to accept, as is implied, that class
mobility was somehow the impetus for educational achievement in the
Black community. The issue of education for Blacks in the decades
after Reconstruction and the period before had much to do with
"upliftment" of course, but not so much individual uplift as race or
community uplift. The complexity of the pursuit of education within
the Black community, therefore, cannot be sidestepped for the facility
of a simple class analysis more suited to the white middle-class model.
The fact that an overwhelming number of Black leaders came from the
"learned" class does not in and of itself suggest that education was
pursued to secure leadership status within the Black community.
Leadership within the Black community was not limited to teachers,
lawyers and ministers, but also included farmers, laborers, and
washerwomen. Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color, 268. See Stephanie Shaw,
What A Woman Ought to Do and Be; Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race:
Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.)

 

 

 

 

125 "Race Uplift" took on an additional obligation for black college
women; they were to advance the educational goals of the race by
teaching the young and also "lift up" the moral character of the race
by demonstrating sexual virtue. The implication being that teaching
was the only acceptable way for Black women to enter the public arena
and still somehow maintain their virtue. See, Jeanne Noble, "The

47

her appointment to the Office of the Corporation Counsel of
New York Law Department when she said "My main interest has
always been the uplift of our race."126

It may have been more acceptable to Gaius Bolin had
his daughter pursued a career in teaching. When she told
him that she was accepted to Yale, she remembers that he
was quiet for a minute or so, then he said, "I always
thought you were going to be a school teacher. I don't like
you becoming a lawyer because lawyers have to hear such
dirty things sometimes and a woman shouldn't have to hear
some of the things a lawyer hears."127 He believed that
lawyers had to deal with the most unpleasant and sometimes
the grossest kind of human behavior; he thought the law too
indelicate a profession for a woman.128 He clearly
subscribed to the belief that teaching was the only
acceptable way for Black women to enter the public arena

and still somehow maintain their virtue.129 However, as a

 

Higher Education of Black Women in the Twentieth Century," in John Mack
Faragher and Florence Howe, eds , Women and Higher Education in
American History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 91.

 

 

126 As quoted in J. Clay Smith, Jr., Emancipation: The Making of the
Black Lawyer 1844-1944 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1993), 405 .

127 Interview with Rudd, 34.
128 "Speeches" folder, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

 

129 Gaius Bolin's less-than-progressive point of view reflected the
sentiment of many men and of many of the nation's law schools, and was
not unlike that held half a century earlier by Justice Bradley in the
infamous Bradwell case of 1872. In his concurring opinion on Myra
Bradwell's argument that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited a state
from classifying her as unfit to practice law simply because she was
female, Justice Bradley reasoned that "the natural and proper timidity
and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for
many of the occupations of civil life." The law was such an occupation
which the court characterized as "requiring highly special
qualifications and demanding special responsibilities," and therefore

48

father he supported his daughter for whom he had been a
major influence.130 The fact is, he was terribly incensed
when his daughter told him of the guidance counsellor's
discouraging remarks. Bolin remembered that "After
disposing of the vocational guidance counsellor with a few
forceful words concerning the desirability of her residence
in a warmer place than Massachusetts," her father reminded
her that he still did not approve of women lawyers, but
told her that if she was sure she wanted to be a lawyer she
should make application to the finest law school that
admitted women.131 Unbeknownst to him she had already
applied to the school of her choice.

She selected Yale, because as she recalls, Yale and
Columbia were the only law schools at the time accepting
women, and she did not want to go to school in New York
City.132 She had taken a trip down to Yale one day from
Wellesley to be interviewed, and planned to tell her father
only after she was accepted. "I didn't dare tell my

father," she recalls, "because I knew he wouldn't approve."

 

beyond a woman's capacity. See Noble, "The Higher Education of Black
Woman," in Faragher and Howe ed., Women and Higher Education in
American History, 87-106; Bradwell v. Illinois, 16 Wall. 130 (U.S.
1872) .

130 She remembers spending lots of time in her father's office. "I can
remember," she says that from the time I was young tough, I used to go

to his office sometimes, that I wanted to be a lawyer." Interview with

Rudd, 72.

131 "Speech in honor of DuBois," Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

 

 

132 It is clear that she meant "the only law schools within the
metropolitan area" accepting women. By 1928 there were other mid-
western schools like University of Michigan Law School accepting women,
and of course Howard Law School. Her choice of words is telling; she
"selected" Yale, which implies that she was already cognizant of her
qualification.

49

Clearly Gaius Bolin's notions about a woman's career choice
took on a different meaning when it involved his daughter.
He had always impressed upon her never to hesitate to try
to achieve her ambitions. He may not have approved of her
career choice, but he did nothing to discourage her. On
the contrary, he did everything to support her decision,
and reminded her that as long as he was paying for her
education she was going to get the best education
available.133 Jane took this opportunity to inform him of
her acceptance to Yale, and just as he had always done he
financed her education.

In 1928 Bolin entered Yale Law School. It was exactly
ten years after the University Corporation at Yale had
voted to admit women for legal education.134 There were
three women in her class, and one in the third year class.
Of the four women altogether she was the only African
American. The other women were White. The fact that Yale

admitted women did not mean that they were accepted in its

 

133 Some women were not as fortunate as Bolin. Dr. May Edward Chinn,
born in 1896, was the only woman doctor in Harlem for fifty years. She
recalled that her father was deeply embarrassed by her educational
pursuits and not only discouraged her but provided no financial
support. Her father believed a woman's role was in the home, and that
"A girl that went to college became a queer woman." See Linda M.
Perkins, "The Education of Black Women in the Nineteenth Century," in
John Mack Faragher and Florence Howe, eds., Women in Higher Education
in American History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 83-84.

134 Justice Sandra D. O'Connor recalls that when she graduated from
Stanford University Law School in 1952, the women in her class could be
counted on one hand, and job opportunities were slim. By 1985,
however, women accounted for more than one third of the average law
school graduating class, and in some schools comprised over half of the
student body. Justice Sandra D. O'Connor, "Introduction: Achievements
of Women in the Legal Profession," New York State Bar Journal, October,
1985.

 

 

 

50

community. As Morello points out, no matter when the
change occurred to accept women, those women who were
determined to get an Ivy League education inevitably faced
long periods of resistance, resentment, and grudging
accommodation.135 J. Clay Smith observes that the
experiences of early Black law graduates of Yale remain a
mystery.”6 .Although Bolin does not detail her experiences
at Yale, one account makes it reasonable to infer that her
experiences at Yale were somewhat reminiscent of her
experiences at Wellesley. In an interview, she recalled
that “a few Southerners” at the law school had taken
pleasure in letting the swinging classroom doors hit her in
the face.137 This affront was sufficiently cruel that many
years later when one of these "Southerners" became active
in the American Bar Association and invited her to appear
before the association's group in Texas, she declined
without hesitation.138

When asked in an interview whether she was paid any
attention because she was the first African American woman

student, she wondered by whom? No one paid her any

 

135 Before Yale Law School voted to admit women, a white woman, Alice
Jordan, managed to take advantage of a loophole in Yale's policy and
negotiated her admission in 1885. It appears that the men who had
drafted Yale's catalogue had not anticipated a woman applicant, and
therefore were not specific about those excluded. However, subsequent
to "the Jordan incident" their policy of exclusion became unambiguous
as to sex. See Morello, Invisible Bar, 90—92, 106.

 

136 Smith, Emancipation, 37.

137 David Margolick, "In Retrospect, Father Didn't Know Best in the
Case of a Daughter With a Habit of Making History," The New York Times,
May 14, 1993.

138 Ibid.

 

 

51

attention to the best of her recollection.139 She remembers
the disregard exhibited by her professors at Yale. In
particular, she remembers that one professor, to whom she
refers as "one of the southern professors," would never
acknowledge her whether he saw her on the streets, inside
the building or outside the building. Then one morning,
while talking with Dean Charles Clark in the hallway he did
as he always done. He ignored her when she said "good-
morning." However, on that particular morning the
professor was made to acknowledge her when the dean asked
him if he had heard Miss Bolin say good morning. "And the
professor," she recalls, "sotto voce mentioned, mumbled
"good morning."140

Smith finds Yale's admission policy to have been quite
favorable to Blacks. In 1878 Yale admitted its first Black
law student, Edwin Archer Randolph, and in 1910 it admitted
the first Black deaf mute law student, Roger Demosthenes
O'Kelly. Smith states that in 1915 when Nathan B. Young,
another Black law student, entered Yale there were two
other Black law students enrolled and not "much prejudice."
The fact that Nathan Young was elected to the debating club

evidenced a climate of "not much prejudice" in Smith's

 

139 The university had no dormitories for women at that time because
there were so few women law students. So they all had to live in
private homes. She remembers the law school being very small at that
time and there being many southern students and southern professors.
She remembers having two southern professors during her three years at
Yale, neither of whom ever called on her in class. Interview with
Rudd, 7.

140 Interview with Rudd, 24-25.

52

opinion.141 A clear understanding of the degree of
prejudice exhibited at an institution cannot be gleaned
from simply noting the membership of a single Black student
in the debating club or any other club. Evidence of
"firsts" suggests an unraveling of one form of prejudice.
Yet it does very little to enlighten about the real climate
and gender dynamics of prejudice.

Bolin was the first African American woman at
Wellesley and Yale. Yet her experiences speak volumes of
the climate of prejudice at these institutions which had
admitted her. The fact is that Howard University assumed
the major responsibility for training a significant
percentage of Black lawyers during an era of tokenism in
the north and complete exclusion in the South. Howard's
Law Department was established in 1869 and named after
General Oliver Howard, head of the Freedman's Bureau and
first president of the university. African Americans found
it almost impossible to obtain a law school education at a
time when a law school education had become mandatory for

the practice of law.142 Law school training for the

 

141 Nathan Young was the first Black law student elected to such a
position. This phenomenon of single Blacks excelling during periods of
segregation needs analysis that gets to the psychology of inclusion
within communities of men and communities of women, and how they
differ. In addition, evidence of "first" does little to enhance our
understanding of the numbers of others who were excluded; or maybe in a
perverted way it does. For every Black person admitted to a northern
institution, there were literally hundreds with equal ability who were
denied a legal education. Smith, Emancipation, 37.

 

142 During the 18905, the law school replaced the law office as the
primary locus of legal training; as such, practitioners lost direct
control over admission to the profession. Wayne Hobson, The American

 

53

practice of the law became the rule by the end of the
nineteenth century with the emergence of the "Harvard
Model" of legal education. The "Harvard Model" of legal
education required the traditional three-year course of
study instead of the earlier one-year course of study.143
By the turn of the century law schools were endowed with
the primary responsibility for training lawyers. According
to Morello, law schools at this time were also allying
themselves with prestigious law firms and bar leaders.144
As such, it was not enough for aspiring lawyers to only
attend law schools, because quite often where they went
determined the advantages they would have.

Sociologist Cynthia Fuchs Epstein contends that so
long as women were not part of the educational elite their
chances of being Brahmins of the legal profession were that
much diminished. She observes that "restrictions or quotas
on their entrance meant that channels to the larger firms
served by Columbia, Yale and Harvard were cut off, and
channels to the other firms that comprised the country's
principal legal community and to posts in government and

leading corporations were also severely limited."145 In

 

Legal Profession and the Organizational Society, 1890-1930 (New York:
Garland Publishing, Inc., 1986), 104-106.

143 Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Women in Law (New York: Basic Books, 1981),
49. See also, Morello, Invisible Bar, 89.

144 Morello. Invisible Bar, 89.

145 Epstein is as guilty as many other scholars who speak broadly in
terms of "women" without regard for the multi-positionality of Black
women. Clearly the fact that Bolin had attended an Ivy League law
school did not do much to open those top jobs of which Epstein speaks.

 

 

 

54

1928 when Jane Bolin entered Yale law school she was one of
three women, and the only African American. Bolin was part
of the educational elite. She had taken the path from
Wellesley College to Yale law school becoming Yale's first
Black woman graduate in 1931. She had survived an
atmosphere of biased professors and resentful students who
may have hoped that they could make it impossible for her
to continue. But according to Morello, "their behavior had
the opposite effect-—it toughened women students and taught
them how to survive the hostile environments they would

find in government and industry."146
For Bolin, being part of the educational elite was not

the passport it had been for white men and many white
women. Beverly Blair Cook observes that the connection
between graduation from an elite law school and an
invitation to join a prestigious law firm is not as close
for women as for men. She finds that even today women who
have the necessary credentials are not recruited as
seriously as men.147

For most lawyers, graduating from a prestigious law
school at the top of their class meant being swooped up by

any one of the major law firms. Not so for Jane Bolin.

 

A Black woman's racial characteristic cannot be ignored in any analysis
of her experiences. Epstein, Women in Law, 49-51.

146 Morello, Invisible Bar, 106-107.

 

 

55

She was credentialed in 1931 from an Ivy League law school,
yet she remained excluded from the major law firms which
remained all white and for the most part, all male. For
Black lawyers, and more specifically Black women lawyers,
"credentialism" did not always work as a proxy for
conformity to the dominant male model of excellence.148
Bolin's rise in the legal profession is therefore best
understood through a multi-layered and intersectional
analysis that looks at more than just credentialism. The
analysis of her judicial appointment and reappointments to
the Family Court of the City of New York, and its
predecessor courts, therefore includes the units of gender,
class, race, and politics, in addition to credentialism.
This "politics of preparation" will be examined in the

following chapter.

 

147 Beverly Blair Cook, "Women Judges in the Opportunity Structure," in
Laura L. Crites and Winifred L. Hepperle, eds., Women, The Courts, and
quality (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1987), 164.

148 Hilary Sommerlad, "The Gendering of the Professional Subject:
Commitment, Choice and Social Closure in the Legal Profession," in
Clare McGlynn, ed., Legal Feminisms: Theory and Practice (Vermont:
Ashgate Publishing Co., 1998), 5.

 

 

56

Chapter 3

The Politics of Preparation:
The Making of An African American Woman Judge

I wasn't concerned about

first, second or last. My

- 14
work was my primary concern. 9

Jane Bolin's graduation from Yale University Law
School in 1931 signaled the beginning of a remarkable
series of Black "firsts," and an outspoken commitment to
reform. The first Black woman to be graduated from Yale
Law School, she, pioneered in the legal profession and,
became the first and only African American woman judge in
the United States when New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia
appointed her to the Domestic Relations Court in 1939. Her
rise in the legal profession came swiftly, and she appears
to have ascended the professional ranks with relative ease.
However, an examination of her professional life beyond its
pioneering peaks reveals the plane of discrimination she
transcended.

Membership in the educational elite for Bolin did not
constitute a passport to success as it was for her
predominantly white and male Yale classmates. After being
appointed judge, Bolin would have to wait several years

before membership in the American Bar Association (ABA)

57

would be open to her. The ABA denied membership to African
Americans until 1943. Traversing a maze of prejudice and
discrimination was not without consequences. She could not
have emerged unscathed. This chapter, therefore, analyzes
the fabric of her professional life, from law school
graduation to judicial appointment. It unravels the
threads of gender, class, race, credentialism and politics,
which, when woven together, created for Bolin "some of the
problems and promises of all Blacks, of all women, and of
all lawyers."150

Political Scientist, Beverly Blair Cook suggests that
if society provided the same material and psychic supports
and the same opportunities for all its citizens then the
population proportion of each group would predict its
proportion of political representation.151 Therefore,
according to the law of probabilities women should be in
about fifty—two percent, and African Americans in about
twelve percent of the judgeships. Where the law of
probabilities would place Black women is open to
speculation, but it is definitely higher than their current

and historical representation on the bench.

 

”9 David Margolick, “At the Bar,” New York Times Law 14 May 1993, B8 L.

150 Joyce Ann Huges, "The Black Portia," The Crisis (May, 1975): 168.

151 Beverly Blair Cook, "Women as Judges," in Beverly B. Cook, Leslie
F. Goldstein, et al., Women in the Judicial Process (American Political
Science Association, 1988), 9.

 

 

58

Society in the United Stated had not always provided
the same material supports and the same opportunities for
all of its citizens across sex, race, and economic lines;
the necessary amendments to the Constitution, and the Civil
Rights Acts of the 19505 and 19605 expose the degree to
which it had not.152 Proportionately, black women were, and
remain, drastically underrepresented on the bench, but then
they were equally underrepresented as lawyers proportionate
to their numbers in the larger society.153 Ever since
Charlotte E. Ray graduated from Howard Law School and was
admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1872, making
her the first black woman lawyer in the United States, few
black women entered the legal profession. In 1959 there
were reportedly over 6,000 female lawyers in the United
States, but only a mere eighty—three of them were African

American. Of these eighty—three black women lawyers,

 

152 The Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution gave blacks formal
citizenship, and sought to secure the exercise of that right; the
Fifteenth Amendment recognized black men's right to vote; The
Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed white women the right to vote; the
Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965, and 1968 sought to protect
the exercise of citizenship whether through schooling or voting. See
generally, Steven F. Lawson, Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and
Black Politics in America Since 1941 (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.,

1991 .)

153 According to the United States Bureau of the Census, in 1973, there
were 446 black women lawyers and 51 black women judges. But, further
investigation by Judge Edward B. Toles, reveals that there were
actually 23 black women judges during this period, with the second
black woman judge being named twenty years after Bolin, in late 1959.
See generally, Alvin E. White, "Women Judges," Dawn Magazine, (October
26, 1974): 4, Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

 

 

59

nineteen were in New York, thirteen in Illinois, and ten in
Washington, D. C.154

A political system is only as egalitarian and
representative as the society in which it is based.
Sociologist, Magali Sarfatti Larson's sociological study of
professionalism shows that the development of specialized
roles and functions within professions is broadly

determined by the inseparable and dependent structure of

inequality.155 The legal profession, therefore, inherits
legitimacy from the culture and the social institutions
that made it objectionable for over half of its citizens
(women and blacks) to be full participants. As a result,
it has become, according to Epstein, an undistorted
reflection of the society's social irresponsibility.156
Immediately following graduation from Yale, Jane Bolin

returned to her hometown of Poughkeepsie, New York. Her
brother, Gaius Charles, Jr. was graduated from New York

University Law School in 1927, and had joined their

father's law practice in Poughkeepsie.157 Jane Bolin's

 

154 "Why Aren't There More Women Judges," The Afro-American, 21
February 1959: 1 and 7.

155 Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological
Analysis, (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1977),
page 2.

 

 

156 Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Women in Law, (New York: Basic Books, Inc.
1981), page 303.

157 Gaius Charles, Jr. attended Howard University and Amherst College
before law school. He remained in Poughkeepsie until his retirement,

I

 

6O

decision to return to Poughkeepsie, however, was not based
on a desire to establish professional roots in Poughkeepsie
with her family. To be sure, her father and brother had
managed to build a very lucrative practice in
Poughkeepsie.158 But Jane Bolin did not gauge her
professional success in Poughkeepsie by that of her father
and brother. And furthermore, she had no illusions about
the opportunities for her own success, as a Black female
lawyer, in Poughkeepsie. She explained, "I did not see the
opportunity in Poughkeepsie to bring to fruition the
aspirations and ambitions and dreams I have had from my
childhood."159 She was "essentially a large city person"
who did not care much for provincial living. She had
always loved, and wanted to live and work in, New York City
ever since she first visited as a child.160 However, the
evidence suggests that it was not merely her love for the
big city and love for diversity that propelled her
departure, but rather her resentment of the widespread

marginalization that characterized Poughkeepsie.

 

and eventually became counsel for the Poughkeepsie Housing Authority.
"Biographical File," Box 1, Bolin Papers.

158 Gaius Charles Bolin, Sr. first hung his shingle in 1901. Interview
with Rudd, 25-26, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

159 Ever since she was a child, hanging around her father's law office,
she has always wanted to be a lawyer. Ibid.

160 She recalls how much she looked forward to the family's annual
Labor Day visit to New York City to see their father's brother.
Interview with Rudd, 26—27.

6|

 

New York City in 1931, though relatively more
progressive than elsewhere in the nation, furnished few
opportunities for African Americans or women in the legal
profession. The problems and obstacles impeding the
professional development of black lawyers during this early
period have been discussed elsewhere in great detail and
need only brief mention here.161 The fact is, as former
Atlanta mayor Maynard H. Jackson exclaimed in a tribute to
the Black bar, "When considered in light of the impediments
and shackles born of a system of racism and systematic
exclusion, the gains of the black lawyer are nothing short
of phenomenal."162 Scholars have agreed that the problem
of professional segregation has beset black lawyers
throughout much of the last century. Most white law
schools, which, with a few exceptions were located in the
northeast, excluded Blacks. Eighteen of the nineteen Black
law schools established prior to 1900 failed. Howard Law

School was the sole surviving black law school. Between

 

161 See generally, J. Clay Smith, Emancipation: The Making of the Black
Lawyer, 1844—1944 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1993); Edward J. Littlejohn and Donald Hobson, Black Lawyers, Law
Practice, and Bar Associations 1844-1970: Michigan History (Detroit:
Wolverine Bar Association, 1987); Jerold Auerbach, Unequal Justice:
Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1976), 212-216; Darlene Clark Hine, "Black Lawyers
and the Struggle for Constitutional Change," in John Hope Franklin and
Genna Rae McNeil, ed., African Americans and the Living Constitution
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), pages 33-55;
Geraldine Segal, Blacks in the Law: Philadelphia and the Nation
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

162 Quoted in Hine, "Black Lawyers and the Struggle for Constitutional
Change," in African Americans and the Living Constitution, 33-55.

 

62

1877 and 1935, it became the only substantial source of
legal education for black people in the United States.163
The American Bar Association, comprised of the local
bar associations, went to great lengths to keep African
Americans out. An "inadvertent" election of the first
three African American lawyers to the American Bar
Association (ABA) in 1912 resulted in the ABA's resolution
that all future applications be specific as to applicant's
race and sex. Leaders of the ABA rationalized that they
never contemplated that African Americans would be members
of the association.164 Faced with such formidable
resistance in their struggle for equal justice, the
development of professional opportunities, and social
networks, Black lawyers founded the National Bar
Association in 1925 and agreed that its objectives would

be:
the advancement of the science of jurisprudence,
and in addition to form a nationwide organization
of practicing attorneys of the Negro race in an
endeavor to strengthen and elevate the Negro
lawyer in his profession and in his relationship

 

163 In 1939, North Carolina Central University Law School in Durham,
North Carolina was founded, and in 1947, Texas Southern University Law
School in Houston, Texas, and Southern University Law School in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana were both founded. Together with Howard, these law
schools have trained the majority of Black lawyers in the country.
Hine, "Black Lawyers," page 37; Segal, Blacks in the Law, page 2.

164 In 1912, the ABA inadvertently admitted three Black lawyers into
its fold. However, upon discovery, the Executive Committee stated that
"the settled practice of the Association has been to elect only white
men to membership." It was further decreed that in the future all
recommendations for membership of a Black person had to attach a
statement attesting to the race of the person. William R. Morris of
Minneapolis, who was one of the three admitted inadvertently, resigned
the following day by telegram. Segal, Blacks in the Law, pages 17-20,
97.

 

 

63

to his people; to improve his standing at the bar
of the country, and to stress those values that
would serve to enhance the ethics of his practice
and conduct, to condemn actions that have a
tendency to lessen respect for the lawyer and to
create a bond of true fellowship among the
colored members of the Bar of America for their
general uplift and advancement and for the
encouragement of the Negro youth of America who

will follow their choice of this profession.165

In 1943, the American Bar Association opened its
membership doors to African Americans. Or more accurately,
by 1943 the doors of the American Bar Association had given
way to external pressure. In April 1943, the year that
Jane Bolin became the first Black woman admitted to the
Association of the Bar of the City of New York (ABCNY),
Assistant District Attorney and Harlem community leader
Francis Ellis Rivers' application for ABA membership took
center stage in the ABCNY's investigation of charges that
the ABA refused to admit African Americans. Rivers was
admitted to the ABCNY in 1929 becoming its first Black
member since its founding in 1870.166 Bolin condemned the

controversy, and saw the whole matter as a "great shame,"

 

165 Before the NBA was established, local Black associations had been
formed, such as the John M. Harlan Law Club of Ohio, and the Cook
County Bar Association of Illinois. Littlejohn and Hobson, Black
Layyers, page 57; Segal, Blacks in the Law, page 18; see also Hine's
discussion of the early history of Black lawyers and their association
in Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of the White Primary in Texas
(Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1979.)

165 Rivers was responsible for the creation of a new Tenth Judicial
District for Harlem. It assured the historic election of two African
American judges. New York Herald Tribune 18 April 1943; Segal, Blacks
in the Law, page 18.

 

 

 

64

but said that she knew very little personally of the
struggle in the American Bar Association.167

Her public condemnation of the ABA's discriminatory
practices clearly showed her support for Rivers and other
black lawyers who sought membership in the ABA, even if her
words betrayed no personal desire to join. To be sure, she
was well aware of the real advantages of membership in bar
associations. Her own membership in the ABCNY proved to be
"a practical aid in her profession."168 When elected to
membership in the ABCNY, she described how much she looked
forward to the benefits of membership. "The Bar
Association has a very fine library," she said, "and here
in this building (court house) our library is small and
inadequate." She was also a member of the New York County
Lawyers Association, but that library, she said, "although
well equipped, is always very crowded, with its books much
in demand;" therefore, "The opportunity to use the Bar
Association library on Forty—fourth Street will mean a
great deal to me."169 The importance of the American Bar
Association and other bar associations cannot be
overstated. A major goal of all bar associations was to
establish a sense of professional community within the

vaguely defined group of lawyers whom they considered their

 

167 Neither Jane Bolin, her father nor brother appear to have sought
membership in the ABA. New York Herald Tribune 18 April, 1943.

168 She also belonged to the New York County Lawyers Association, the
New York Women Lawyers Association, the Bronx Women Lawyers
Association. New York Herald Tribune 18 April 1943.

159 Ibid.

 

 

65

constituency.170 However, the more utilitarian description
of James Grafton Rogers concludes that a yearning for
social contact and the need for library facilities were the
major "raison d'etre" of bar associations in the early
years.171 Clearly, the pragmatism of the latter resonated
with Bolin, who had, by then, been on the bench for four
years.

Notwithstanding the dismantling of the ABA's racial
barriers, overt discrimination in hiring practices remained
rampant well into the 19605. White law firms hired very
few women or Black lawyers before the 19705. And when
these law firms did, they restricted them to certain types
of practice.172 To rationalize exclusion of black lawyers,
most firms argued that their influential clients refused to
deal with Black attorneys, "particularly where the clients
had to depend heavily on the attorney's skill and
expertise."173 In actuality, the skill and expertise so
integral to professional development were acquired

primarily on the job, and since restrictive hiring was

 

170 Wayne K. Hobson, The American Legal Profession and the
Organizational Society: 1890-1930 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.,
1986), pages 226—227. Hobson further states that this goal preceded the
later focus of bar association activity, which was to establish the
legitimacy of professional self-regulation.

 

171 Wayne Hobson, The American Legal Profession and the Organizational
Society, 1890-1930 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1986), 227.

172 Hine, "Black Lawyers," 41; Littlejohn and Hobson, Black Lawyers,
pages 2-53; see generally, J. Clay Smith, Emancipation, Segal, Blacks
in the Law.

173 Edward Littlejohn and Donald L. Hobson, Black Lawyers, Law
Practice, and Bar Associations - 1844 to 1970: A Michigan History
(Michigan: Wolverine Bar Association, 1987), 8.

 

 

 

 

66

practiced, that training was barred to those excluded.
Almost by design, the legal profession, like many other
professions, limited access to training to a select
membership, then resorted to the circuitous argument that a
specific group of professionals was not hired because of
lack of training.

Epstein finds this process to be a contradiction of
the ideology of even-handed fairness on which the law is
based. She maintains that by the canons of its own logic
the law should welcome to its practice all those who
qualify by reason of intelligence and facility. Yet, the
evidence makes it abundantly clear, and an uncontested
truth, that lawyers discriminate in ways that violate this
standard.174 Darlene Clark Hine notes that, as a
consequence, the average Black lawyer possessed limited
opportunities for professional development and growth, and
often, low professional esteenu175 To overcome this
obstacle, Black lawyers could either apply to the few

existing Black sole practitioners or Black firms if they

 

174 Epstein, Women in the Law, 80.

 

175 Before the legal turning point of Brown (1954), Black attorneys
were virtually isolated professionally, and those Blacks who did retain
them were usually too poor to furnish lucrative practice. Hine, "Black
Lawyers," 41, 47. The attitude of the Black community did not always
help to bolster their self—esteem. Many Blacks who needed legal
representation feared that Black lawyers would be unsuccessful against
a white lawyer and before a white judge, regardless of the ability or
quality of the performance of the Black lawyers. Their fears were not
unfounded. Segal, Blacks in the Law, 17. Charles J. Ogletree, "Blind
Justice?: Race, The Constitution, and the Justice System," in African
Americans and the Living Constitution, 235-269. He finds that their
citizenship history and their experience in the justice system have
informed their beliefs and fears.

 

 

 

67

wanted to enter private practice.176 If they preferred
government service, they could seek a post in the District
Attorney's Office, where Black lawyers had held pOsitions
from the early years of the twentieth century.177 They
could, in the alternative, join a friend or associate in a
partnership or a space-sharing arrangement. They had more
promising chances for professional training and association
within their own professional communities. As a result,
the vast majority of Black lawyers concentrated in the
least desirable and remunerative areas of practice, such as
criminal offenses, domestic relations, and small claims.178
Black attorneys were virtually isolated professionally, and
black people who did retain them were usually too poor to
furnish lucrative practice. The attitude of the Black
community did not always help to bolster their self—esteem.
Segal finds that many Black people who needed legal
representation feared that Black lawyers would be
unsuccessful against white lawyers and before a white
judge, regardless of the ability or quality of the
performance of the Black lawyers. Their fears were not

unfounded. Charles Ogletree finds that their citizenship

 

176 Littlejohn and Hobson, Black Lawyers, 7-12-

177 The following are just a few examples of female black lawyers who
worked in attorneys general offices: Pauli Murray was a California
Assistant Attorney General in 1946; Eunice Hunton Carter was for 10
years, an Assistant District Attorney of New York City; Edith Sampson
became Illinois's first Black woman Assistant States Attorney in May,
1947. Ebony Magazine 2 August 1947, page 19; see also J. Clay Smith,
Emancipation.

 

 

 

178 Hine, "Black Lawyers," 41; Littlejohn and Hobson, Black Lawyers, 7-
22.

 

68

history and their experience in the justice system have
informed their beliefs and fears.179

Women fared no better in the legal profession. Jane
Bolin insisted that although race played a part, "I was
rejected on account of being a woman."180 In 1931 in New
York City, there was no law firm or government agency
clamoring to recruit this Yale Law School graduate.
Although the practice of soliciting law students to join
law firms is relatively recent and probably not customary
before the 19605 when "scouting" the law schools became
standard procedure for the larger law firms.181 But as late
as the 19605, a Fulbright fellowship, a doctorate and an
honors law degree could not get Rita Hauser, a white woman
lawyer, employment in any of the established law firms.
Hauser recalled, "It was really galling, the firms had this
policy against women and it was impossible to change
them."182

The connection between graduation from an elite law
school and an invitation to join a prestigious law firm

was, according to Cook, not as close for women as it was

 

179 Segal, Blacks in the Law, 17; Charles J. Ogletree, "Blind Justice?:
Race, The Constitution, and the Justice System," in Living Constitution
235-269.

180 David Margolick, "At the Bar," The New York Times 14 May 1993, BB-
L. A 1947 Ebony article on "Lady Lawyers" reported that "Most colored
Portias agree that their sex is a far greater barrier than color to
successful law careers."

 

 

 

181 Wayne Hobson, The American Legal Profession, especially Chapter 4.

182 Karen Berger Morello, The Invisible Bar: The Woman Lawyer in
America, 1638 to the Present (New York: Random House, 1986), 207.

 

 

 

69

for men.183 No less than race, gender clearly problematized
"credentialism" as an instrument of formal equality. Black
women, who were doubly impaired because of the politics of
race and gender, found "credentialism" even more
problematic.184 At least in Poughkeepsie Bolin could avail
herself of the expertise and practice of her father and
brother to obtain the necessary training.

In Poughkeespie Bolin clerked in her father's law
office for six months before taking the New York State Bar
Examination. She was admitted to the New York bar, and
remembers how proud she was to have her name put on the
door of her father's office where she practiced with him
and her brother for about a year. While a member of the
family practice, she carried a diverse caseload including
many criminal cases. One such case involved girls from the
Wassaic State School, a school for mentally retarded

children, whom she successfully defended against charges of

 

183 Beverly Blair Cook, "Women Judges in the Opportunity Structure," in
Laura L. Crites and Winifred L. Hepperle, eds., Women, The Courts, and
Eggity (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1987), 164.

184 Many women entered the professions by this strategy. There are
other parallel developments within the professions that worked to
undermine credentialism, resulting in the "credentialist usurpationary
strategy" no longer considered enough to meet the dominant male
standard. Sommerlad argues that social closure against women in the
profession is being reinforced through the notion of "commitment" as a
core criterion for participation in the primary legal labor market.
But this is not new. The roles of womanhood have long since been
manipulated to effect social closure against women in the professions.
In the case of Black women, the bombardment has been twofold coming as
it did from within their own community and from the larger dominant
community. Hilary Sommerlad, "The Gendering of the Professional
Subject: Commitment, Choice and Social Closure in the Legal
Profession," in Clare McGlynn, ed., Legal Feminisms: Theory and
Practice (Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Co., 1998), 3-20.

 

 

7O

assault and property damage. She did not have a clientele
of her own, so her father shared his caseload with her, and
saw to it that she met all the judges with whom he worked.
She searched titles for him and, at his insistence, spent a
great deal of time observing trials in the Supreme Court.185
Her father provided her with the opportunities for
professional development that discrimination in the
profession had denied her. Black professionals provided
opportunities for career development for their own. Bolin
was fortunate to have had a father and brother in practice.
This was one advantage that helped to offset the
detrimental racial and gender exclusion in the larger legal
profession. This network of support that existed within
the black legal community is instructive of the early
professionalization of the black bar in the first half of
the twentieth century when it was most beset by
professional segregation. To coexist as professionals
within this segregated profession, black lawyers looked to
their own communities for the opportunities for
professional growth. Hine speaks of this
professionalization in reference to the consolidation of
the black bar as social engineers during the first phase of
the modern civil rights movement.186 This early period of
the 19305 and 19405 further represented a broader sense of

social engineering, beyond that captured in the

 

185 Interview with Rudd, Box 1, Bolin Papers.
186 Hine, "Blacks Lawyers."

7|

specialization and practice of civil rights law. Thus, I
am extending Hine's perspective of this period to account
for the reality of the black bar and the black community as
the major first employers of the black lawyer.187
Segregation had thrust black lawyers back into their
communities. Yet, they did not collapse under its weight.
Instead, black lawyers joined existing legal practices
within their communities and obtained the necessary
experience for professional development. This "birthing"
of the black legal community became the foundation for
later maturation and specialization of the black bar.188
This parallel construction of opportunity, however, was
limited. To the extent that the judicial system remained
an integral part of the profession, the parallel
construction of opportunity could only be partial. To be
sure, African Americans could, and did, establish their own
schools, law firms, local bar associations, a national bar
association (all institutions central to the bar), and

opportunities for professional development. But, they

 

187 Analyses of the choices made by Black lawyers during this period
are needed. The truth is that many Black lawyers abandoned the
practice of law in the conventional sense and carved out new spaces, no
less respectable, for themselves in their communities. These legal
professionals joined an existing class of professionals within the
Black community. There has not been much examination of the dynamics
within this class. Hine's Speak Truth To Power begins the discussion
between the professionals that made up this class. Given the variation
in the processes of professionalization, it would be misleading to
assume that the role and contribution of the lawyer was the same as
that of the doctor or nurse or social worker or teacher. This study
raises the question and suggests an examination. Hine, "Black
Lawyers."

 

188 Hine, "Black Lawyers;" Segal, Blacks in the Law.

 

72

could not create a parallel institutional tribunal for the
practice of law; nor was there some customary "extra-
judicial" tribunal in which to operate. The constitution
stood as the fundamental or paramount law of the nation and
its judicial institution as the single tribunal for
determining what the law is and is not. There could be no
construction of a parallel court system.189 For all of
their success in self-training, self-employment, and self-
association, black lawyers still had to acquit themselves
before a judicial system that did not always provide for
their equality under the law, or their participation in the
legal profession.

Without a doubt, Jane Bolin was far more fortunate
than the average black lawyer of the period, having as she
did a father with an established and well-respected
practice. But, Poughkeepsie could not contain her. In
1932, she left "the comfortable security of my father's

home to start practicing law in New York.190 But, even

 

189 In the minds of many African Americans there existed two separate
systems of justice: one for White Americans and one for everyone else.
This perception was born of years of experience, but could never be
substantiated by physically separate systems of justice. There was a
more complete construction of parallel opportunity and
professionalization within the Black hospital movement, and the Black
nurse movement. See generally, Darlene Clark Hine, Black Women in
White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890-
1950 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).

 

190 It is interesting that she uses the phrase "my father's home" as
opposed to "my father's practice." Or maybe for her they were one in
the same. Without specific evidence about why her brother remained in
Poughkeepsie practicing until retirement, one can only speculate that
as the son, he was naturally positioned to be his father's "rightful
successor." Independent of her personal reasons for wanting to be in
New York City, Bolin clearly did not see any real professional future
in Poughkeepsie as a black female lawyer. Her recollections about her

73

armed with her Poughkeepsie experience, there was more
unpleasantness looking for work in New York City. When she
applied to a few local law firms, she found the climate
frosty and dismissive. She recalled, "The reception I got
was very, very businesslike, and I was disposed of rather
rapidly."191 For the next year of so, she engaged in the
private practice of law with Ralph E. Mizelle, "and with
him for the next four years as wife and business
partner."192 She and Mizelle met while she was a freshman
at Yale Law School. They had both been invited to a party
following a Yale-Harvard football game. The party was
hosted by a prominent dentist and his wife in New Haven.
Mizelle, who was fifteen years her senior, was practicing
law in New York City at the time, and had come up from New
York for the party. Although her sister Ivy thought that
she was attracted to Mizelle because he was somehow a
substitute for her father, she thought only that "He was a

very attractive man, physically," who had a flair for

 

father giving her cases and mentoring her, although thoroughly
beneficial to her, are very telling in the sense that maybe she never
stepped out of his shadow, and probably never would have, had she
remained in Poughkeepsie. In Poughkeepsie she might have remained
Gaius Bolin's little girl, never truly being able to carve out her own
public space, or to create her own professional identity. She recalled
once arguing a case before a judge of the Dutchess County Supreme
Court, when to her embarrassment, he said, "I'm going to tell you what
your father would tell you: 'Stop when you're ahead.'" Interview with
Rudd, Box 1, Bolin Papers. In Women Lawyers: Rewriting the Rules, Mona
Harrington writes about the passing of power and authority from one
generation to the next, and highlights the "unnatural" place of the
daughter as her father's "rightful successor," 70.

191 David Margolick, "At the Bar," The New York Times, May 14, 1993,
page B8-L.

 

192 Interview with Rudd, Box 1; New York Amsterdam News 29 January
1944, 7-A, Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

74

life.193 And although she never alluded to it being love at
first sight, she and Mizelle were engaged shortly
thereafter, and married in 1933. Their only child, Yorke
Bolin Mizelle was born in 1941, just two years before
Mizelle’s death in 1943.

The first years of their five—year practice together
were "decidedly precarious," says Bolin, but she had come
to New York City intent upon a career in law, so she
endured.194 Many lawyer— wives, such as Marjorie MacKenzie
Lawson of Washington; Elizabeth F. Allen of South Bend,
Indiana; Margaret B. Wilson of St. Louis; Alice Huggins of
Chicago; Sadie Tanner Alexander, and Edith Sampson Clayton,
had formed legal partnerships with their lawyer-husbands in
the 19305 an 19405. Yet, Bolin was more fortunate than the
majority of her contemporaries who were forced to quit the
law for less precarious occupations.195 One magazine
article reported in 1947 that "over 50 per cent of today's
lady lawyers work in government agencies, social service or

civil liberties organizations," because "Perhaps steady

 

193 She disagrees with her sister's assessment, but does agree that she
was very close to her father. While doing the interview she injected
the fact that the first car she owned was a Ford given to her by her
fiance, Mizelle as a graduation gift. This self-initiated recollection
appeared quite meaningful to her. Interview with Rudd, 67-68, Box 1,
Bolin Papers.

194 Poughkeepeie New Yorker, 23 February 1944, Clipping File, Box 3,
Bolin Papers.

 

195 Charlotte E. Ray, the first African American woman lawyer, was
forced to leave the practice of law to become a teacher because she
could not make a living as a lawyer. Ebony Magazine August, 1947,
Clipping File, Box 3.

 

75

jobs offer greater security...[And] Maybe sex and color
discrimination make actual practice too difficult."196

Black lawyers had come to expect a certain precarious
position in the profession. The early success of black
lawyers like Gaius Charles, Jr., and his father before him,
was therefore the exception. The fact that the Bolins were
a prominent family in Poughkeepsie for several generations
clearly enabled Gaius Bolin, Senior, and Junior, to avail
themselves of a majority of white clients, which further
enabled them to sustain quite a lucrative practice.197
Nevertheless, Littlejohn and Hobson note that most black
firms formed during the first half of the twentieth century
were typically small, financially precarious, and short-
lived, because few would attract the clients needed to
sustain a steady practice since they had few white clients
and competed with white lawyers for available black
clients.198

By 1937, the difficulties of private practice had
thrust Jane Bolin and her husband back into the job market.
The office of "Mizelle and Bolin" had dissolved, and
Mizelle had joined the Post Office Solicitor General's

Office in Washington, D. C.199 Bolin's elite education and

 

195 Ibid.

197 Bolin to Dennis Clark Dickerson, 27 December 1978, Box 3, Bolin
Papers. Also see references in Chapter One.

198 Littlejohn and Hobson, Black Lawyers; Interview with Rudd, Box 1,
Bolin Papers.

 

199 Mizelle was assigned to Washington, so he traveled a lot. Bolin
admits to having one of the early commuter marriages. Interview with
Rudd, Box 1, Bolin Papers; see also a study of the sociology of dual

76

years of experience, however, did not immediately open
doors for her. Much had not changed in the five years
since she first looked for employment in New York. The
climate remained cold and dismissive, and she was quickly
dispatched during interviews. When she applied for a
position in the Office of the Corporation Counsel of the
City of New York Law Department, she was interviewed by the
First Assistant Corporation Counsel, a man Bolin describes
as being "from the south of the United States."200 As she
recalled, "He was making short shrift of me by telling me
there were no vacancies." Fortunately, her exit was
interrupted by Paul Windels, the Corporation Counsel, who
informed her of his interest in having her join his legal
staff. But, according to Bolin, the Assistant was adamant,
insisting "but we have no line for her in the budget,"
whereupon Windels said, "but we do," then shook her hand
and welcomed her to his staff.201

Paul Windels had been a close political advisor to La
Guardia, and had been named Corporation Counsel during La
Guardia's second mayoral term. Described as "impeccably

credentialed," Windels was an astute politician, who

 

career couples in Bart Landry's Black Working Wives: Pioneers of the
American Family Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2000) .

200 She describes several personalities as "southerners" or "from the
south" when referring to experiences of prejudice or discrimination;
she seems to have had quite a few encounters with such personalities.
The fact that she specifies their region of origin speaks to her
understanding or expectations of the progressive north versus those in
the Jim Crow south.

 

 

201 Interview with Rudd, 8-9, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

77

demanded assurances of exclusive control over his
department before accepting the mayor's offer and challenge
to create the best law department in the country“.202 Within
a year of his appointment, Windels had, reportedly,
converted a department that habitually retained expensive
outside counsel for every nonroutine matter into one of the
best legal staffs in the country.203 The fact that Windels
counted Bolin among his elite legal staff speaks clearly to
her qualifications, but it also suggests something about
the politics of preparation, and appointment.

In 1936, the year before Bolin interviewed with the
Corporation Counsel, she ran on the Republican ticket for
the New York State Assembly for the Nineteenth District.
That was the year that moderately conservative Republican
Party stalwart Alfred Landon ran against President
Roosevelt.204 Bolin's candidacy, though unsuccessful, gave
her the public orientation so important to women's

eligibility in the pool from which lawyers are so often

 

202 Thomas Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New
York (New York: McGraw—Hill Publishing Company, 1989), 261 and 275.

203 Kessner, La Guardia, 275.

204 The presidential election of 1936 was a national referendum on
Roosevelt and the New Deal. The governor from Kansas, Alf Landon, had
lost before he begun. The president and the Democratic Party swept to
a landslide victory with Roosevelt polling 27.8 million votes to
Landon's 16.7 million. The growing strength of the Democratic Party in
the cities and the New Deal's responsiveness to social distress
combined to make Roosevelt the champion of the urban masses. A
majority of African Americans had, by the 19305, abandoned the party of
Lincoln, for the Democratic Party. Interview with Rudd, 8, Box 1,
Bolin Papers; Alan Brinkly, Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the
American Pegple (New York: Columbia University, 1997.

 

 

78

recruited for the legal hierarchy.205 It was customary in
New York politics during the reign of Tammany Hall, for
Republicans to regularly concede a particular district seat
to the Democrats; thus nominating a candidate who was
usually a loyal party supporter or, according to Kessner,
"some obscure men [or women] of local stature to collect
the ceremonial honors and go down to defeat."206 In 1936,
Bolin was the designated candidate, who was "prevailed on,
for dearth of another candidate" to run for the New York
State Assembly on the Republican ticket for the Nineteenth

District.207

 

205 The selection of judges is embedded in the political process, and
eligibility requires more than legal experience. Therefore, a viable
female candidate, even more so than a viable male candidate, must also
have political credentials in her state and locality and understand the
formal and informal steps to the bench. As late comers to the
profession, and its politics, women would seem to require much more
visibility to increase viability. Cook, "Women Judges in the
Opportunity Structure," in Laura L. Crites and Winifred L. Hepperle,
ed., Women, the Courts, and Equity (Newbury Park: Sage, 1987), 143-174.
Also see generally, Cook, "Women Judges: The End of Tokenism," in
Winifred L. Hepperle and Laura Crites, ed., Women in the Courts
(Williamsburg, Virginia: National Center for State Courts, 1978), 84-
105.

206 For example, the 14th Congressional District was Tammany territory,
therefore any Republican running knew they would not win. Kessner, ge
Guardia, 34.

 

 

207 Black Republicans traditionally operated within the confines of the
regular party structure. 80 even though Black Republicans composed the
majority of voters in the 19th and 215t Assembly Districts (AD) through
most of the 19205, it took an unusual effort to unseat, what Osofsky
calls, the "real Harlemites," those "born and raised in this section,"
who had control when whites represented a majority in the neighborhood.
Sometimes the efforts to elect Black Republicans in the 19U‘AD and 215t
AD were defeated when Blacks joined with the white minority to vote
against Black insurgents. But the main problem was political
geography, which had the 19th AD and 21“ AD as part of the larger 215t
Congressional District, which included three solidly white and
traditionally Democratic assembly districts. So, although the black
vote was substantial enough to warrant nominations, it was restricted
by its very concentration. Interview with Rudd, 8, Box 1, Bolin
Papers; Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, Negro New York 1890-
1930 (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 174-177.

 

79

Like the overwhelming majority of Black Americans,
Bolin was at the time, a loyal supporter of the party of
Lincoln, and had also lived Republican politics through her
father's recollections.208 That Jane Bolin, at age twenty—
eight, received the Republican nomination to run for a
State Assembly seat confirms not just her loyalty to the
party, and her involvement in local party politics, but
also her own political ambitions. Some might argue that
she simply played the role of "scripted loser," running, as
she did, on a ticket slated to lose. Indeed, the very
politician, Fiorello La Guardia, who would a year later
appoint her to the bench, had in the early years of his
political career played the role of "scripted loser," a
role which, many might argue, did not hurt his political

career.209

 

208 Roosevelt had nominated the elder Bolin in April 19, 1899, and
within a day he won legislative approval, as a member of the Board of
General Managers of the Pan American Exposition to be held in Buffalo
in 1901. Bolin won legislative approval on April 20, 1899 along with
eight other nominees. Charles W. Anderson, a Black politician who had
worked in the state comptroller's office under a previous governor,
knowing of Bolin's friendship with Roosevelt, asked him to write a
letter of recommendation on his behalf for candidacy on the Board of
Managers of the Pan American Exposition. When Roosevelt responded to
Bolin's letter of recommendation, he had instead nominated Bolin for
the position that Anderson sought. This political appointment
strengthened Bolin's loyalty to Theodore Roosevelt. He was known
around Dutchess County as the eyes and ears of Roosevelt. Dennis C.
Dickerson, "First Black Graduate," 7-8, Box 3, Bolin Papers; Thomson,
"51 Years a Lawyer," Sunday New Yorker, 22 November 1943, Clipping
File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

209 La Guardia had won the Republican nomination to run against Michael
Farley in the Fourteenth Congressional District race for the House of
Representatives in 1914. La Guardia failed to win, but his spirited
effort attracted the attention of party veterans; his candidacy,
however unsuccessful slated him for a patronage appointment, which
later propelled him into congressional service and the mayoralty.
Kessner, La Guardia, 34-35.

 

80

However unsuccessful Bolin's candidacy might have been
the party's nomination in itself had far-reaching political
currency. Bolin had in actuality accepted the Republican
nomination knowing very well that it was meaningless as far
as the State Assembly seat in the Nineteenth District was
concerned. Yet, her political acumen must have suggested
that there would be political rewards, including, but not
limited to, a patronage appointment. Harlem lawyer and
politician, Francis E. Rivers was no doubt referring to the
likes of Bolin when he said, "The New York Negro has
learned to play the game [of politics] in a realistic
fashion."210 Paul Windels's appointment of Bolin was laced
with political meanings. Certainly, an appointment by
Windels would also be counted as an appointment by La
Guardia. By virtue of the fact that it was an appointment
to the Law Department, which had achieved national respect
because of the Vision of the man whom the mayor had
handpicked as Corporation Counsel, meant that La Guardia
could count Bolin among the few African Americans in his
administration.

In 1933 when La Guardia first took office, he
assembled a cabinet of all men, all white men, who
represented a cross-section of every ethnic group in the

city, save for the African American.211 In 1936, on the

 

210 As quoted in Osofsky, Harlem, 159 and 172; Francis E. Rivers,
"Negro Judges in Harlem," The Crisis, 38 (November 1930):377, 393.

211 His "fusion" administration included Socialists, Democrats,
Republicans, and non-political professionals. Some have suggested that

8|

heels of the Harlem Riot of 1935, La Guardia swore in Myles
A. Paige as the city's first African American magistrate,
but essentially he had not altered the hue of his
administration.212 In that same year, the mayor summoned
Jane Bolin to his office, but never revealed the exact
reason for their meeting. As she was leaving his office,
he said only "that I was too young for the position he had
in mind."213 Bolin later found out that Domestic Relations
Court Justice Rosalie Whitney, one of La Guardia's few
female appointees, had recommended her to the Mayor for a
judgeship. It is no coincidence that Windels's appointment
of Bolin to his elite legal staff occurred within months of
the mayor's consideration of her for a judicial
appointment. La Guardia had told New Yorkers, "I have
sought high and low for men who could effectively do the
job." And, he had found a woman who could effectively do

the job in his administration, and one who had paid her

 

few presidential cabinets could match the political diversity of La
Guardia's circle of department heads. But there could be no argument
about the lack of racial diversity in his early administration.
Kessner, La Guardia, 274-279.

 

212 Paige's appointment came after an active life in local politics.
For example, in August 1926, the Columbia University Law School
graduate was selected to run for the State Senate. Once in office La
Guardia treated Tax Commissioner Hubert T. Delaney (later a New York
City judge) as an unofficial ombudsman for the black community.
Kessner, La Guardia, 368-377; for discussion of the 1943 riot see also
Dominic Capeci, The Harlem riot of 1943 (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1977.

 

 

213 Bolin practiced before Judge Whitney in the Family Court as an
Assistant Corporation Counsel. "New York's “First Black Woman Judge
Retires,” American Bar Association Journal, June 1979, Clipping File,
Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

82

dues in the party; but at twenty-eight, she was considered
to be too young.214

The lack of a more immediate and direct reward is
probably related to, what Gilbert Osofsky identifies as,
"the cynical and apathetic attitudes" of white politicians
who did not see African Americans as a major political
force.215 An almost religious adherence to the Republican
Party weakened the political position of black people in
New York City. Their unprecedented concentration in
Harlem, however, permitted them a more active role in
politics.216 Still, there would not be a patronage
appointment in the form of a judgeship just then for Bolin,
but what better consolation than an appointment to the
nation's finest Law Department. As an Assistant
Corporation Counsel, Bolin was assigned to the Domestic
Relations Court where she advocated for petitioners who
could not afford private counsel. Her work in the Domestic

Relations Court was timely and important for the Black

 

214 Kessner, La Guardia, 275.

 

215 Harlem was the first black community in the nation to lend
significant support to the Democratic Party. Unfortunately for black
politicians, an accident of political geography divided their vote
between two assembly districts, the 19th and the 215t, which were part
of the 215t Congressional District which included three solidly white
and traditionally Democratic assembly districts. But proper
representation was assured, when Francis E. Rivers drafted a bill,
which passed, that forced the division of Harlem's Seventh District
Municipal Court into a new administrative entity - the Tenth District.
This intentional gerrymander guaranteed the election of two black
judges to the municipal court in 1930. And, by 1944 with Harlem's
political boundaries redrawn, New York elected its first black member
of the House of Representatives, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Gilbert
Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890-1930 (New
York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1966), 159-178.

215 Ibid.

 

83

community which had earlier been made the subject of a
study commissioned by the presiding justice of the city's
Domestic Relations Court, Justice Edward Boyle.

Boyle supposedly alarmed by the disproportionate
presence of black children in the court system,
commissioned the study of "The Negro Problem as Reflected
in the Functioning of the Domestic Relations Court of the
City of New York."217 Among other findings, the 1934 report
stated that childhood crime among blacks had risen over the
past thirteen years by more than 240 percent; that in
Manhattan fully 25 percent of all juveniles arraigned in
children's court were blacks; that more than one-fourth of
all nonsupport cases in the city involved black families.
The report then made the alarming conclusion that "The
court has not been able for some years satisfactorily to
function in cases involving Negro children."218 For as
thorough as the study was purported to be, it neglected to
address the real circumstances of black life in New York
City in the 19305 that gave rise to the disproportionate
presence of black children in the court system. The
Depression had made a poor situation worse in Harlem; the
national economic crisis had sent the already depressed
ghetto economy into tailspin. The last hired and first
fired, African Americans suffered from a level of

unemployment two and three times the rate of whites. Many

 

217 Ibid.
218 Kessner, La Guardia, 372.

 

84

men, unable to secure jobs, abandoned their families, while
women forced to work outside of the home, left young
children to sometimes fend for themselves. Moreover,
programs established to help the poor openly discriminated
against African Americans.219 La Guardia's administration
had inherited these conditions, but even with a full
mayoral term under his belt, the mayor had not resolved all

that ailed the black community.
He had tackled long-standing prejudices, integrating

the all-white staffs of city hospitals and expanding civil
service opportunities for blacks. Yet, he gave up an
opportunity to seriously consider the concerns of Boyle's
report when he passed it on to his assistant, Louis Dunham
who merely recommended "further study."220 La Guardia
showed some sympathy for the plight of blacks, and was
praised by many black leaders as "one of the most fearless
friends the Negro has ever had in or out of Congress."221
And, relatively speaking, he was. But, Kessner finds that
he offered no special program to single out their

communities and treat its unique problems.222 Black Harlem,

 

219 The impact of the Depression on African Americans has generated
volumes of literature, not to be addressed in this work. Kessner, £2
Guardia, 371-373.

220 Ibid., 372.
221 Kessner, La Guardia, 371.

222 For example, La Guardia established an 11-member biracial
commission to study the causes of the rage that exploded in 1935 in
Harlem, and for the first time to ask African Americans themselves what
it was like to live in Harlem. The commission was chaired by a black

85

therefore, faced their unique problems alone. Except that

now there was an advocate working on the inside of the

city's judicial system who fully appreciated their plight.
In referring to her appointment as an Assistant

Corporation Counsel, the New York Times reported that she

 

was assigned to a tribunal that "handles many cases
involving members of her race."223 However significant this
appointment was for New York's black community, it remained
unsettling for the traditionalists who intended to temper
any signal of changing times, however slow. Such

commentary as was printed in the New York Times, seems to

 

suggest that there was some consolation in the fact that

 

dentist, Dr. Charles Roberts, and the actual research was done by famed
Black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier. The commission held 25
hearings, collected testimony from over 160 witnesses, and after more
than a year, issued "The Negro in Harlem: A Report on Social and
Economic Conditions Responsible for the Outbreak of March 19, 1935."
The commission described the riot as Harlem's "inarticulate response"
to racism and unemployment, and called for sweeping reform in
healthcare, housing, police practice, and schools. Precisely because
the recommendations were so sweeping and critical of his
administration, La Guardia did not act immediately, but presented the
report to Howard University professor Alain Locke (famous for his study
on the "New Negro") for further review. When Locke agreed with the
report's initial conclusions, and urged the mayor to publish the
document so that it could become the basis of a new program of sweeping
reform in Harlem, La Guardia refused. Although he committed more
resources to Harlem, he was not prepared to place Harlem at the center
of his agenda, as Locke and the commissioners demanded. See generally,
Kessner, La Guardia, 374-376.

223 David Margolick, "At the Bar," The New York Times, May 14, 1993,
B8-L.

 

 

86

Bolin's appointment was only to a tribunal that

predominated in "cases involving members of her race."224
It was 1939, almost four years since Harlem had
erupted, and from all reports, still an incendiary period
for the city. La Guardia was in his second term as the
city's mayor; yet he had not grasped fully the magnitude of
the plight of African Americans, nor the force that fanned
the embers from 1935.225 La Guardia might have hoped, by
appointing Bolin a judge in the Domestic Relations Court,
to alter, if not reverse, the image of the court's
inefficiency and insensitivity in handling cases involving
black children.226 Bolin's service as Assistant Corporation
Counsel in the Domestic Relations Court clearly made her a
superior candidate for a judgeship in that court. She

certainly intended to execute the responsibilities of her

 

224 As mayor from 1933-1945, La Guardia had jurisdiction over court
appointments in the Domestic Relations Court and the Criminal Court of
the city. That he appointed even one Black woman to the bench is
significant. That she was appointed to the Domestic Relations Court
and not the Criminal Court is also significant. La Guardia set many
precedents with the appointments of African Americans, but never at the
risk of political suicide. In June 1935, La Guardia had "his one-man
personnel screening committee," C. C. Burlington test reaction in
judicial circles to the appointment of an African American as
magistrate, before he actually approached Myles Paige for the position.
Burlington had given the okay that "such an appointment would cause no
undue ruckus." See generally Kessner, La Guardia, 376.

 

225 He refused to accept the prescriptions of Franklin's report and
Alain Locke's recommendations about it. See Kessner, La Guardia, 374-
376.

226 This image was painted clearly in the conclusion of Justice Boyle's
report which read "The court has not been able for some years
satisfactorily to function in cases involving Negro children." Kessner,
La Guardia, 371-372.

 

 

87

office seriously and nondiscriminately, and said as much
when she stated publicly that:

I am a judge, not of Harlem, nor the children of
Harlem, but for the whole city and for all
children who are in trouble. Harlem's problems
are the same as those of other communities.

Every child who comes before the court needs
attention and his case must be heard and judgment
made in view of all the factors of personality
and environment entering into the particular

child's life.227

Her appointment to the bench occurred without much
fanfare. She was summoned to the Mayor's office, once
again without being told why. In mid-July, 1939, she was
instructed to come, with her husband, the following
Saturday, July 22, to the New York City Building in the
World's Fair, which was just opening, in Flushing Meadows,
New York.228 She recalled being "frightened because the
Mayor was Fiorello H. La Guardia and he had instituted the
practice of an answer for every complaint his office
received and the answer had to be given to him within just
a few days." She naturally pondered reasons why the mayor
would summon her to a meeting, but could not think of

anything that she had done to warrant such a summons.

 

227 More than anything else, she wanted to bring Harlem and the
problems of its black youth within the purview of city responsibility.
Emma Bugbee, "Justice Jane M. Bolin Shuns Glib Diagnoses of Child
Crime," New York Herald Tribune 18 April 1943, Clipping File, Box 3,
Bolin Papers.

 

228 Ironically, Bolin was named among African Americans whose names
were inscribed on the wall of honor of the American common at the New
York World's fair. Her name was among five listed for contributions to
education. The other four were: Booker T. Washington (1849-1915), W.
E. B. DuBois, Archibald Grimke (1849-1930), and Herman Moor. Interview
with Rudd, 9, Box 1; "Fair Honors Mrs. Mizelle," Clipping File, Box 3,
Bolin Papers.

88

Still, she was certain she was "in for a hard time." She
and her husband reached the New York City Building and
waited for the Mayor who was out on the grounds. When the
Mayor returned, she said he "just breezed past me saying he
wanted to speak to my husband." The mayor and her husband
then retired to a private office, leaving Bolin alone
outside to ponder her fate. Shortly thereafter the two men
emerged smiling; the mayor told one of his assistants to
call in the photographers, then she said, "He told me to
stand up, raise my right hand, and he swore me in as a
judge of the Domestic Relations Court."229

Presentist positioning might extract a very
chauvinistic reading of La Guardia's request to speak first
with the husband of a judicial appointee. Current feminist
sensibilities might even suggest that though she was the
professional equal of her lawyer-husband, Bolin was seen,
and treated, as a subordinate who needed permission.
However, Bolin's characterization of the mayor's actions is
more pragmatic. She said she was so overwhelmed and
surprised, that at the time, she really did not think about
it, but that "I can understand now and subsequently I could
understand why he did that — [it] was because he wanted to

know the character of the man who was my husband."230 Given

 

229 La Guardia obviously thought that the young Bolin was old enough at
31 to assume the position he had had in mind for her two years earlier.
Margolick, "At the Bar"; Interview with Rudd, 9, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

230 This was a valid inquiry given the importance of her office. To
queries about her own understanding of the matter, she says only, "I
can't think of any other reason, can you?" To the question of

89

the importance of the appointment, this would certainly be
a valid inquiry. Although, there is nothing to suggest
that such protocol was followed with male appointees, black
or white.

Bolin assumed her judicial responsibilities almost
immediately. The Monday after her Saturday appointment she
sat on the bench of the Domestic Relations Court of the
City of New York as the nation's first African American
woman judge. This she did "without any guidance," a
practice she criticized, and worked hard to change. It is
agreed that a lawyer should already know the law before
becoming a judge. Bolin agrees that for a lawyer to enter
that forum unprepared is unthinkable, but realizes that
some lawyers may have to work a little harder in the
beginning to learn specialized law that pertains to the
particular court of appointment. At the time of her own
appointment, she had had solid specialization in Domestic
Relations Law while an Assistant Corporation Counsel
assigned to the Family Court. Yet, she strongly believed
that "no lawyer should be thrown cold into a court" to sit

as judge. She felt certain that judicial appointees should

 

permission, she laughed and said No. Bolin remembers that when she was
Assistant Corporation Counsel and her husband, Ralph Mizelle was
working in Washington in the Office of the Solicitor General of the
United States Post Office, he had jokingly asked her if she wanted him
to use his paycheck to cash hers. But that the table had turned only
two years later when she received her first paycheck as a judge; she
then asked him if he wanted her to use her paycheck to cash his. When
she became judge, La Guardia had reduced the salaries of all city
employees, making her salary $10,500 per year instead of $12,000.
Interview with Rudd, 18, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

90

be given an opportunity, after appointment or election, to
observe for a few weeks with another judge before taking on
their actual responsibilities. Not surprisingly, she was
extremely generous with her assistance to new judges while
she was on the bench.231

There were only two other female judges sitting in the
Domestic Relations Court when she was first appointed.
Judge Rosalie Whitney was one of them, and the one with
whom she quickly bonded professionally and socially. They
first met when Bolin appeared as an Assistant Corporation
Counsel before Judge Whitney in the Family Court. "Judge
Whitney and I just seemed to be attracted to each other,"
she said, "and really eventually loved each other." As two
"outsiders," these women supported each other, and gained
strength from each other - as professionals, as women, and
as widows. Judge Whitney's husband, also a lawyer, had
died years before Ralph Mizelle death in 1943. Whitney was
also one of La Guardia's women appointees, so together with
the few other women of his administration, they formed an
organization called the "Women in the La Guardia
Administration."232

This small group of women, somewhat analogous to a bar
association, provided mentorship and support to each other.

Each appointee belonged to different Bar Associations, but

 

231 "Myles Paige Award," December 1983, Awards Folder, Box 2; Interview
with Rudd, 17-18, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

232 Interview with Rudd, pages 22-23, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

9|

they would have dinner about once every month, or once
every two months so that they could get to know each
other.233 This also gave them a forum for discussing their
experiences as legal pioneers, and for discussing the law,
something Bolin recalled she and Judge Whitney did often.
She remembered Judge Whitney as someone who "loved to
discuss the law." As a young judge, Bolin learned much
from Judge Whitney. She counted her and Mrs. Roosevelt
among a very short list of female mentors, even if "By the
time that I met Judge Whitney and Mrs. Roosevelt, I was
already an adult and a judge."234 She held her High School
English teacher, Miss Jackson in high regard, and believed
that she influenced her greatly. Bolin had always been an

avid reader, "but she [Jackson] broadened my reading tastes

very much." However, it was her father who influenced her
the most. "When I was a child," she said, "it was solely
my father." She remembered going with her father on

Saturday mornings to his office, and imagines that "being
surrounded by those shelves and shelves of law books -
those great big law books that he had and hearing him talk
- I think that must have been really why I wanted to become
a lawyer."235 Her father may have been the one to light and
nurture the legal spark in her, but the sisterhood she

created with women like Judge Whitney and Mrs. Roosevelt,

K

233 Interview with Rudd, 22—23.
234 Interview with Rudd, 33.
235 Interview with Rudd, 33-34.

92

 

as an adult, sustained her as a pioneer in a male dominated
profession.

At the time of Bolin's appointment, the Children's
Court and the Family Court, each with its separate
jurisdiction, comprised the Domestic Relations Court. The
Children's Court had almost exclusive jurisdiction over
children, and was therefore separate from the Family Court
which had jurisdiction over a broader spectrum of family
issues mainly involving adults.236

In the Domestic Relations Court, each judge had to
spend one month in each of the two sections (Children and
Family) of the Court rotating around the five boroughs of
the city, so that in the course of a year, every judge
would have covered both sections of the Domestic Relations
Court in all five boroughs.237 Overwhelmed by lengthy
calendars, and required to finish daily calendars without
the option of adjournment, Bolin found herself working very
long hours, many nights as late as nine o'clock, and on

occasion working until eleven o'clock at night. A July,

 

236 After her initial assignment she rotated through the Family Court
also. She presided over hearings involving the entire court spectrum:
homicides and other crimes committed by juveniles; nonsupport of wives
and children; battered spouses; neglected children; children in need of
supervision; adoptions, and paternity suits. The process of court
unification was an issue of great concern to her. She thought that the
division into Children's Court and Family Court was a false dichotomy
that placed a heavy and often unreasonable burden on petitioners and
respondents who are turning to the courts for help. "Retirement File,"
Box 3, Bolin Papers.

237 Later with the restructuring of the Court, each judge was assigned
to their home borough, which was the borough of residence at their
initial appointment. Hers was Manhattan, so she became a Manhattan
judge. Interview with Rudd, 49.

93

1948 Performance Evaluation lists Bolin's adjournment
record as the best in the Domestic Relations Court. With a
volume of 725 hearings for a one month Court Term, Bolin
had a total of thirteen adjournments, or a 1.8 percent
adjournment rate, the lowest in the court.238 The practice
was later changed to a fixed schedule from 9:30 AM to 5 PM,
but she shouldered the previous schedule for the greater

part of her forty years on the bench.
In 1962 with the unification of the Domestic Relations

Court, all sections were under a single jurisdiction
restructured as the Family Court of the State of New York
with expanded jurisdiction. Bolin served as judge in the
Children's Court, rather than in the Family Court where she
had practiced for the past two years as an Assistant
Corporation Counsel. Justice Boyle's 1934 report
criticized the Children's Court's treatment of the city's
Black children. Jane Bolin's appointment as judge, and
subsequent assignment to the Children's Court, was
therefore most timely given the barrage of criticism aimed
at La Guardia's administration. It was no secret that La
Guardia played the game of race politics. According to
biographer, Thomas Kessner, despite the mayor's frequent
denials that "I have never appointed and never will appoint

a man [or woman] to office because of his [or her] color,"

 

238 Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

94

La Guardia played the game of ethnic appointments with rare
flair.239 Summing up his administration's attitude toward
African Americans in a characteristic speech before the
NAACP convention in Philadelphia in 1940, La Guardia
declared:

I appoint Negroes to office in New York not
because they were Negroes, but because they had
the qualifications and abilities which the City
of New York needed to get a job done, and every
one of them has made a fine civil servant of

which any municipality could be proud.240
But, La Guardia understood the importance of a "carefully
selected token," as did the communities from whence those
persons came.

The respected Black daily, the New York Amsterdam

 

Newe, lauded La Guardia for appointing "more Negroes to
big, responsible jobs in city government ... than all other
mayors of the city combined." They believed that such
appointments educated New Yorkers to wider possibilities
for integration than they had allowed themselves to expect
before. Even Walter White, Executive Secretary of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

(NAACP), praised the mayor for his forward-looking policies

 

239 Kessner, La Guardia, 376.

 

240 The editorial further praises La Guardia for setting a pattern and
creating a climate in the nation's largest city thereby inspiring
African Americans everywhere in their struggle for full citizenship,
and for also encouraging timorous and hesitant municipalities toward
the ideal Americanism of complete integration of all elements of the
population. Crisis October 1947, Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

95

regarding African Americans.241 The NAACP and the black bar
had agitated for years for black inclusion in city
government, and they believed their efforts were beginning
to pay off. In death, La Guardia was editorialized as
being a friend to African Americans "not because he gave
them special, or occasionally sensational, or preferential
treatment, but because in his conception of American
democratic government and in his administration of it they
were included as citizens.242

In his study of the black lawyer, J. Clay Smith
uncovered the degree to which African Americans themselves
pushed La Guardia into action. Francis Ellis Rivers was
very influential in this regard. Assemblyman Rivers, who
graduated from Columbia University Law School in 1922, and
broke the color bar of the New York State Bar Association
and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York
founded in 1876 and 1870 respectively, helped pass the
Legislative Act (Chapter 651 of the Laws of 1930) that
created the new Tenth Municipal Court District in Harlem.
The new Municipal Court District, as redrawn, awakened
Republican power in a city which had on the whole become
Democratic; it also secured the election of two African

American judges. The historic election and appointment of

 

241 Ibid. That La Guardia appointed even one black woman to the bench
is significant. That she was appointed to the Domestic Relations Court
and not the Criminal Court, over which the mayor also had jurisdiction
for appointment, is also significant.

242 Crisis October 1947, Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

96

many Blacks to the judiciary was definitely paved by the
early groundwork and agitation of Rivers; the NAACP, and
the mass support of the black community.243

Whether La Guardia intended to truly integrate city
government, or just temporarily appease the city's Black
community with a few choice appointments is open to debate.
What is more important is that he ended, even if only by
tokenism, the period of blanket exclusion of Blacks,
particularly Black women, from city government. Tokens
establish precedent, and precedent engenders change. Bolin
believed that "No matter what the past, the future will
take care of itself and even the law may capitulate as have
many other dignified professions thereby becoming a better
profession and a truer expression of democracy - because of
its acceptance of women jurists." Twenty years after her
initial appointment, the lone African American woman judge
was still hopeful that the profession could only move
forward; "And some day, as surely as there is justice,
other colored women will sit on judicial benches - if not

here in New York, surely in some other enlightened area."244

 

243 The Tenth District guaranteed the election of two black judges in
1930. This was the first time any black judges had been elected,
before which time New York City only had Myles Paige as magistrate and
Jane Bolin as Domestic Relations Court judge, both of whom were
appointed. Smith, Emancipation, pages 401—402; Osofsky, Harlem, page
172; Francis E. Rivers, "Negro Judges in Harlem," Crisis (November,
1930) :377, 393 .

244 By 1959, the nation had its second female African American on the
bench, though not in New York. See Alvin White, "Why Aren't There More
Women Lawyers," The Afro-American, (February 21, 1959):7.

 

 

97

"A courageous, no—nonsense hard worker who never
shirked an assignment," is how one of her colleagues, Judge
Joseph B. Williams, described Judge Bolin.245 .Although she
relished the opportunity to help children and families, she
felt overpowering guilt for having to spend that much time
away from her young son, Yorke, who was less than ten years
old during her first term as judge. Looking back, she
still had a sense of guilt even though she knew that as a
widow she had to go to work, because she believed that "my
place was to raise my own child." She felt that she should
not have let the housekeeper have him most of the time, and
she just have him the weekends and evenings.246 She
recalled an instance that made her feel even worse as a
working mother: her son was quite young and was sick with
the measles, and although her housekeeper was devoted to
him and she knew that he would be taken care of, to her
great surprise, her son asked her if she was still going to

work even though he was sick.247 Had she had a steady

 

245 Biographical Folder, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

246 Her housekeeper, who lived in, was a young German woman who came to
the United States after the First World War. She worked with Jane
Bolin before her son was born, and continued in her service for the
remainder of her life. She remembered that she was married but had no
children, and an extremely devoted person to her and to her son.
Interview with Rudd, 46-48.

247 This German housekeeper was to Bolin what many African American
domestics were to many white households in the first half of the 20th
century. They lived in their employers' homes, appearing not to have
lives of their own...but they did. Bolin remembered her housekeeper's
husband visiting her in the evenings, playing cards and having coffee
and cake. The literature on this aspect of women's work is rich. Ibid.,
46-48. On this topic, see for example, Tera W. Hunter, To Joy My
Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997), especially
pages 58-59, 61, 81, 104-106, 212; Stephanie J. Shaw, What a Woman

 

98

income available to her, she was sure that she would have
stayed off the bench to raise her son until he was about
eight or nine years old. She believed that having a
profession, "I could always either practice law or maybe
even get an appointment as a judge again," but she was sure
that she would have stayed at home.248

The ordinary life of this very extra—ordinary woman
clearly sensitized her to the problems of those before her,
especially those of working mothers. She approached each
case with "her natural compassion rather than a judge's
severity."249 The Domestic Relations Court, as she saw it,
was not simply a court but a social agency - where
conflicted men and women could expect more than a court
order telling them to go out and live happily ever after.
She was a strong proponent of individualized justice, and
thought that "In Children's Court you have to take an
individual View, dig into the background of the child, his
physical and mental endowments, all his emotional
patterns," because as she said, "He isn't there for
punishment. He's there for help."250

Each judicial appointment to the Domestic Relations

Court was for a period of ten years with no guarantee of

 

Ought To Be and To Do: Black Professional Women Workers During the Jim
Crow Era (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), especially
pages 112, 113-27, 131-133.

248 Interview with Rudd, 46-47.
249 David Margolick, "At the Bar," New York Times Law, May 14, 1993.

250 Sidney Fields, "Only Human," Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.
Her particular philosophy of the Court and children will be discussed
in a later chapter.

 

99

reappointment. The judge was expected to seek
reappointment at the end of each term from the incumbent
mayor, who could Choose not to reappoint. Although Mayor
La Guardia first appointed Bolin, it is a tribute to her
"sagacity and judicial fitness" that she remained on the
bench regardless of changing administrations and mayors.251
Had LaGuardia not bowed out of the mayoral race after his
third term in 1945, he probably would have reappointed
Judge Bolin to a second ten—year term in the city's
Domestic Relations Court. Mayor William O'Dwyer
reluctantly reappointed her to a second ten-year term
effective July 22, 1949. O'Dwyer, a Tammany Hall Democrat
who was defeated by La Guardia in the 1941 mayoral election
let it be known that he had no intention of wasting a
judicial appointment on a judge who was not part of his
political club.252 The fact that Judge Bolin had tried over

3,000 cases during her first term, never once being

 

251 Fiorello La Guardia was a Republican/Fusion mayor of New York City
from 1933-1945; William O'Dwyer, a Democrat, from 1945—1950; Robert
Wagner, a Democrat, from 1954-1965; John Lindsay, from 1966-1974.

252 O'Dwyer was elected mayor of New York City in 1945. In 1950, amid
scandals implicating him with underworld figures, he resigned shortly
after being elected to his second term as mayor of the city, and sought
refuge in Mexico as an Ambassador. Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan,
Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and
Irish of New York City (Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press, 1963), 208.
Founded by the Irish Catholic, William Mooney, Tammany (after St.
Tammany the American Indian chief) was organized around 1789 in New
York, and later established the New York Democratic party. Tammany
took many traits from Irish politics itself, most notably the custom of
regarding the formal government as illegitimate, and the informal one
as bearing the true impress of the people. The informal one, or the
machine, therefore existed to check the power and authority of formal
government. At the height of its reign Tammany came to be associated
with extreme political patronage and corruption. See Glazer, 221-229.

 

100

overturned on appeal did not matter much to O'Dwyer. Armed
with the information about O'Dwyer's plans, Bolin enlisted
the help of Eleanor Roosevelt with whom she had built a
very close friendship since their founding of the Wiltwyck
School for Boys some years earlier.253 "I went to Mrs.
Roosevelt very disturbed," she said, "because I was a widow
at that time with a two—year old child."254 Mrs. Roosevelt
wasted no time in communicating her support of Judge Bolin
to the Mayor. After her communication, O'Dwyer felt
compelled to recognize Bolin's judicial record, or as he
stated, "felt he couldn't turn her [Mrs. Roosevelt]
down."255

Some may see this as a classic case of political
trumping, and Bolin does credit Mrs. Roosevelt with her
first reappointment to the bench. Yet, to focus on the
centrality of patronage in this instance is to essentially
ignore Bolin's judicial fitness. The role of patronage or

simple advocacy has been important to the professional

 

253 She and Mrs. Roosevelt were founding members of the board at the
Wiltwyck School for Boys. The school was founded because the existing
facilities did not admit black boys. Judge Bolin also sought counsel
with her brother, since her father was deceased, about O'Dwyer's
reluctance to reappoint. Her brother sought out the influence of their
father's friend and colleague, the only other lawyer in Poughkeepsie
during his father's early practice. This Irish lawyer was very active
in Democratic politics in New York, and the hope was that he would
intercede on the Judge's behalf with his political allies. However, to
the Judge's surprise and resentment, the reason this lawyer gave for
endorsing her reappointment was the fact that "I came from a good,
colored family in Poughkeepsie." She wished that she would have
intercepted the letter, but as it turned out O'Dwyer's reasons for
reappointment were no more substantial. Interview with Rudd, 10, 12,
31, 34-35. ‘

254 Interview with Rudd, 31.

255 Interview with Rudd, 32.

|0|

survival of African Americans and other similarly excluded
groups. But, the discourse of advocacy need not supplant
the issue or question of competence. The fact that O'Dwyer
responded to Mrs. Roosevelt's advocacy and not necessarily
to Bolin's record, by itself, reveals little, if anything,
about the importance of Bolin's judicial fitness in his
reappointment of her. Though it is reasonable to imagine
that, even at Mrs. Roosevelt's urging, O'Dwyer would not
have reappointed someone who would have been a political
liability for him.256

City-wide support for Bolin's reappointment from those
who looked to her "characteristic skill, finely balanced
judicial temperament, and profound understanding of the
complex problems involved in human relations" was
instructive of her record as a judge.257 In 1959, when
Bolin's second term was about to end, the president of the
Jewish Child Care Association, Irving Mitchell Felt, wrote
to Mayor Robert Wagner recommending Bolin's reappointment.
Felt told the Mayor, "Your reappointment of Judge Bolin to
the Domestic Relations Court will be heartening to the

profession and lawyers alike who seek understanding and

 

256 To focus on the role of patronage in the professional advancement
of African Americans or other similarly marginalized groups, is to
supplant the reality of over-qualification in the face of exclusion.
The case of Myles Paige is instructive here. When La Guardia appointed
Columbia University Law School graduate, and Senate nominee Paige as a
magistrate, he had no doubts about his qualifications. Yet, the Mayor
felt compelled to say to Paige, "You just have to make good because the
attention of the city will be focused on you." Kessner, La Guardia,
376.

257 "Tuskegee Award," Awards Folder, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

102

help for our troubled children."258 Felt's comments were
typical of the endorsements sent to Mayor Wagner, and
reflected the support that Bolin engendered from lawyer and
layman alike throughout her judicial career. In the same
vein, an endorsement from the New York Women's Bar
Association reminded Mayor Wagner that "Judge Bolin has
discharged the duties and responsibilities entrusted to her
in a manner which demonstrates that she is fair—minded and
endowed with mature judgment and judicial temperament."

The New York Women's Bar Association's resolution further
testified to the high regard in which Judge Bolin is held
and recognized the fine record which she has made as a
Justice of the Domestic Relations Court during her twenty
years of distinguished service on that bench.259 One
attorney, aware of Bolin's rare quality for even-handed
justice, wanted to know what she could do to ensure the
Judge's reappointment. "It's not a court that will help me
anymore without you there," she wrote, "you are the first
and last judge on the bench for me - I got justice when I

came before you."260
In a letter of appreciation from the State of New York

Youth Commission, Bolin was praised for her commitment to

the rights of the city's children. The letter thanked her

 

258 Irving Mitchell Felt to Mayor Robert Wagner, 2 April 1959, Box 3,
Bolin Papers.

259 Norma Z. Paige to Mayor Robert Wagner, 7 April 1959, Box 3, Bolin
Papers.

260 Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

103

 

for being one of the dedicated reasons why the courts for

children are a greater hope.261 The Bronx Women's Bar
Association voted unanimously to pass a resolution
respectfully urging Wagner to reappoint Bolin for another
term as Justice of the Domestic Relations Court. The
resolution stated in part,

"Whereas, members of the Bronx Women's Bar
Association have, on numerous occasions, appeared
before Justice Bolin in the Domestic Relations
Court, Family Division and Children's Court
Division, and

"Whereas, they have always been deeply impressed
by Justice Bolin's outstanding ability as a
jurist, her sympathetic understanding of the
problems facing the adults and children who come
into that court for assistance, and the courtesy
and humaneness shown to all those who appear
before her."262

On May 26, 1959, before Judge Bolin's second term ended,
Mayor Wagner reappointed her to a third ten-year term in
the Domestic Relations Court. Mayor John Lindsay followed
suit, and in 1969 he reappointed Bolin to her fourth and
final judicial term. With the mandatory retirement age
then set at 70 years for judges, Bolin reluctantly stepped
down on January 1, 1979, feeling privileged to have spent
her professional life serving in the Domestic Relations

Court.263

 

261 McCloskey to Bolin, 16 March 1955, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

262 "Resolution by Bronx Women's Bar Association," 5 May 1959, Box 3,
Bolin Papers.

263 "On the Occasion of Her Retirement," Box 3, Bolin Papers.

104

On the occasion of her retirement she received many
accolades from women for whom she had been a role model.
One such letter of tribute came from Justice Constance
Baker Motley of the United States District Court. Motley's
letter read in part:

"First, I congratulate you on having successfully
completed so many years of outstanding judicial
service and for having achieved an unblemished
record while in public life.

"There is a great deal to be said for role model
influence. I thought you would like to know that
you provided a role model for me at a time when
there were very few, if any, black women in the
law. I also recall hearing nothing but praise
with respect to your legal ability when I first
came to New York in 1941. When I thereafter met
you, I then knew how a lady judge should deport

herself. I want to thank you for that.264

La Guardia was pivotal in Bolin's climb up the
professional ladder. But it was her combined professional
and political identity that made her eligible for such
consideration. Aside from her formal qualifications and
professional record, the mayor saw in Bolin someone with
immense compassion, which was exactly what she thought a
Domestic Relations Court judge should possess. She agreed
that any judge should possess an acute acquaintance with
the law, "studying all the cases pertaining to the Court's
jurisdiction - even any place in the United States, [and]

the United States Supreme Court." But, she strongly

 

254 Constance Baker Motley to Bolin, 26 January 1979, Box 3, Bolin
Papers.

105

believed that a Domestic Relations Court judge should first
have common sense, patience, courtesy, and "a broad
sympathy for human suffering, because she will see enough
of it."265 Bolin saw enough of it during her more than
forty years advocating for the city's children. And, she
felt certain that in order to truly serve the city, a judge
needed an understanding of the different cultures that
comprised the city and reflected the composition of the
litigants in the court. She found it to be a most grueling
experience, emotionally and physically. Yet it was an
experience so fascinating and rewarding that she could not
imagine herself doing anything else. "Strenuous as it was,
stressful as it was," she said, "I don't know any position
or practice that I could have had that I would have liked
more than that."266

Bolin was part of the educational elite, but she
shared the disappointments of other professionals. She
benefited from the professional legacy of her father, but
traversed a maze of prejudice and discrimination in the
legal profession. The threads of gender, class, race,
credentialism and politics have woven the fabric of her
success and struggle, even as they have influenced the

structure of her judicial philosophy. The following

 

265 "Only Human," Clipping File, Box 3; Interview with Rudd, 20, Bolin
Papers.

266 Interview with Rudd, 19.

106

chapter examines her philosophy of activism born of years

of struggle and success.

107

Chapter 4

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER:
A View From the Bench of Judge Jane Bolin

I am a judge, not for Harlem,
nor the children of Harlem...
but for the whole city and
for all children who are in

trouble.267

In the Family Court of the State of New York and its
predecessor courts Judge Bolin presided over the complex
and delicate family court matters of juvenile homicides,
nonsupport of wives and children, battered spouses,
neglected and abandoned children, adoptions, and paternity
suits from every racial and ethnic group of every economic
strata. She imparted and fought for justice with equal
vigor, and in so doing, made an indelible impact on the law
and on the lives of many New Yorkers.268 Committed to
making the law an instrument of fairness, her reformist
zeal excited her close friends and colleagues and
encouraged them to join in her crusade for change. Never
settling into what a judicial colleague saw as the "timid
inertia" of the bench, Judge Bolin evolved into a judicial

reformer over the course of four decades on the bench.

 

267 Words of Jane Bolin in Emma Bugbee, "Justice Jane M. Bolin Shuns
Glib Diagnoses of Child Crime," New York Herald Tribune 18 April, 1943,
Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

263 Access to her decisions, except for those she included with her
papers, remains restricted. Requests to review such cases have never
been made to the Family Court of the City of New York. A system has
just been put in place to maintain confidentiality of parties (who are
mostly children) while still affording the public some access.

108

In the early decades of her judgeship, Bolin worked
closely with two of her judicial colleagues, Justices
Hubert Delaney and Justine Wise Polier, to right the wrongs
of every possible injustice before the court and in the
community. When she first came to the Domestic Relations
Court, racial and religious segregation was rife in the

probation staff, in the children's institutions and in the

social agencies. In addition, "one could count on one's
fingers," she recalled, "the number of minorities on our
staff - with me the lone one on our bench."269 When law

assistants were first being assigned to Family Court
judges, Judge Bolin began asking "Where are the black law
assistants?" and before long there were black law
assistants. Black judges were relatively few and so were
black law assistants, but Bolin rejected that explanation
as an acceptable standard. She could not single-handedly
remedy the representation of black judges, but she could
and did effect positive change in the representation of
black law assistants.2'7O Before long she began a campaign,
with the aid of Family Court judges Polier and Delaney, to
secure racial equity in the court and in its supporting

institutions.

 

269 "Remarks by Judge Bolin on occasion of her retirement," 7 December
1978, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

270 These very basic questions of equity seem not to invade the
conscience of her colleagues, who though supportive of Bolin's efforts
for change, never initiated any before she came to the bench. Judy
Klemesrud, "For a Remarkable Judge a Reluctant Retirement," New York
Times 8 December 1978.

109

Among her many victories, there were two that
radically changed the fabric and function of the Family
Court. One involved the assignment of probation officers
to cases without regard to race or religion, and the other
involved private child care agencies accepting children
without regard to ethnic background. Probation officers
were often seen as the juvenile court judge's "right-hand
man."271 One of the several nineteenth- century
developments that conjoined in the juvenile court movement,
probation embodied the ideal of individualized,
rehabilitative diagnosis and treatment.272 Probation
officers assigned to the juvenile courts not only served as
investigators to the juvenile's social history. They also
served as liaisons between the judges and the social
scientists who guided them.273 The department of probation
was therefore central to adjudication in the Family Court.

Bolin had been on the bench only a short time when she
discovered that all of the African American children were
assigned to African American probation officers. She
discovered further that there were no more than two African
American probation officers.274 It had been the practice of

Administrative Judge Hill to assign cases of African

 

271 S01 Rubin, Juvenile Offenders and the Juvenile Justice System (New
York: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1986), 14; Patricia McFall Torbet,
"Juvenile Probation: the Workhorse of the Juvenile System," Juvenile
Justice Bulletin (March 1996):1—5.

272 Ibid.
273 Ibid.
274 Interview with Rudd, 10; Klemesrud, "For a Remarkable Judge."

 

110

——‘=__- Mmzi ..-... w ...—- -.

 

American children to black probation officers, and the
cases of white children to white probation officers. This
was facilitated by the disclosure on court petitions of the
race and religion of the parties. Shocked by the court's
complicity in segregation, she approached Hill shortly
after coming to the bench. "Well, I was so upset by it
that, when I went on the bench," she said, "I went to the
presiding justice, as he was called then, and complained,
and said that this was not right." She even reminded Hill
that as public servants, probation officers should not be
assigned cases by race. As she remembered, Hill was very
annoyed with her and told her that there was nothing that
he could do about it, or as she put it, "would do about
it."275 She enlisted the help of a friend who was a lawyer,
who threatened the Administrative Judge with a suit should
the practice continue. The threat of court action nudged
Hill to discontinue the racial and religious disclosures on
court petitions.

That the Department of Probation and the court itself
were fraught with issues of segregation adversely affected
efficiency. The Court, after all, depended greatly on the
investigations of probation officers to better prepare it
to determine case disposition. The fact that there were
only two probation officers assigned to handle the cases of

Black children meant that these cases would not be given

 

275 Interview with Rudd, 31.

111

the thorough examination reserved for the cases of White
children. Judge Bolin was the only one to take the
Probation Department and the Administrative Judge to task
for practicing segregation in case assignment. Similar
segregation existed in the larger court system. Local
white judges never assigned black lawyers to represent
indigent white defendants. In 1936, Horace Gordon, a black
lawyer who practiced in Harlem, complained that local white
judges assigned white attorneys to defend blacks as well as
whites who are without aid of counsel even when "there are
five or more experienced, able and capable Negro attorneys
present....[yet] not one of them is asked."276 It was not
until 1940 that a black lawyer was assigned to help defend
a white man accused of murder. However, biased hiring and
assignment remained "customary practice" in New York for
decades. Entire industries were kept lily-white even for
menial employment. The subway and surface carriers
sprinkled a few blacks among their janitorial staffs but
closed them out from any middle-level jobs and kept them
all in Harlem. Kessner notes that even the Metropolitan
Insurance Company, with over 100,000 policyholders in

Harlem, hired no blacks.277

 

276 As quoted in Smith, Emancipation, 403. See also Gilbert Osofsky,
Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890-1930 (New York:
Harper & Row, 1966) and Irma Watkins-Owens, Blood Relations: Caribbean
Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900-1930 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1996.)

 

 

277 Smith, Emancipation; see generally, Kessner, 368-371, 373—374.

 

112

In the decades before the 19605 many of the private
czriild placement facilities in New York City were segregated
ailxong religious and racial lines.278 In some instances
t1knere were no public child placement facilities to
eacnsommodate children of certain age groups. As a result,
unatny'young African American children (some as young as
eejgght years of age) were forced to remain in abusive and
Ileeglectful homes, simply because there were no facilities
tiliat accepted them.

Bolin was so moved by the sad state of childcare in

IQew York City that she co-founded, with Eleanor Roosevelt
éand some other "forward thinking people," the Wiltwyck
School for Boys in upstate New York.279 Though the school
was founded in direct response to the discrimination
suffered by African American children, it was not founded
solely for African Americans. Bolin was, by her own
description, "unalterably opposed to segregation by race,
in child caring institutions as well as other places."280

And, true to her belief in integration, she appeared before

 

278 There were facilities that catered to Jewish children, Catholic
children, and Protestant children. The Black children who were mostly
Protestant were sent to, what Bolin saw as, the very inadequate
facilities that the Protestant provided. There was a Colored Orphan
Asylum, which catered to African American children. Yet, all of these
private placement facilities received public monies for their
operation, a fact that Bolin later used to eradicate segregation in
these facilities. Bolin to Maceo Thomas, Chairman of the Colored
Orphan Asylum 18 February 1943; Interview with Rudd, 30; Bolin to John
A. Wallace, Director of New York City Office of Probation, 31 July
1963, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

279 She was vice-president of the Board of Directors of Wiltwyck for
many years. Interview with Rudd.

280 Bolin to Mr. Maceo Thomas, Chairman of the Colored Orphan Asylum 18
February 1943, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

113

the City Council and the New York City Board of Estimate in
1942 as the chief spokesperson in favor of a bill that
would forbid payment of public monies to any institution or
agency that discriminated on the basis of race.

She was very instrumental in drafting this bill, which
bore the names of Earl Brown and Stanley Isaacs, two New
York City Councilmen, with whom she had had repeated talks
about the disgrace of paying public money to private
children's institutions which refused to accept the city's
Black and Puerto Rican children.281 .After the City passed
the Brown-Isaacs Amendment to the City Charter the agencies
were legally prohibited from segregating children. Yet, as
late as 1955, Bolin was once again reminding City officials
of their responsibility to all of the City's children
without regard to religion or race. In a letter to the
Honorable Henry McCarthy, the Commissioner of Welfare,
Bolin called attention to his department's complicity in
the continued slighting of African American children
needing placement. She had referred a Protestant African
American child to the Department of Welfare for temporary
placement, but was informed by a Probation Officer in the
Manhattan Children's Court that although the Department of
Welfare had located room for the child at one of the

facilities, a white Catholic child was preferred.282 .As a

 

281 Earl Brown was the first African American Councilman for the city.
Interview with Rudd, 10.

282 Bolin to the Honorable Henry McCarthy, 1 March 1955, Box 3, Bolin
Papers.

|14

result, another African American child was denied immediate
placement and therefore denied immediate help from the
court.

Armed with the information, Bolin conducted her own
investigation of the rules and regulations governing the
Allocation Division of the Children's Placement Service,
and discovered that the Department of Welfare usually
complied with the religious and racial preferences of
placement facilities. She told the Commissioner, "I am
extremely disturbed by this information. These temporary
detention facilities are theoretically non-sectarian and
since they are in receipt of public funds are required by
the law not to discriminate because of race or religion."
She continued, "It is even more disturbing if the
Department of Welfare of the City of New York permits them
to express a preference for a child of a certain race or
religion and then makes an effort to comply."283

She expected the Department's full compliance with the
law of 1942 which prohibited such discriminatory practices,
and so demanded that the Commissioner forward to her the
instructions he intended to give to the Allocation Division
on how to handle race-specific requests from child
placement facilities.284

The Department of Welfare was not the only agency that

facilitated segregation in placement facilities. The

 

283 Ibid.
284 Ibid.

H5

Department of Probation was no less compliant in this
regard. Bolin discovered in the reports of some probation
officers, specification of a child's race if he or she was
Black or Puerto Rican. She also discovered that on the
face sheet for Juvenile Term (Form #50 - 23 Rev 1//62), a
space headed "RACE" was utilized for the inscriptions "N"
and "PR" designating "Negro" and Puerto Rican. In a letter
to John A. Wallace, the Director of New York City Office of
Probation for the Courts of New York City, she inquired
about the reasons for the racial specification on the
forms, knowing full well that they were there to simplify
the matching of children with facilities.

She stipulated what the probation officers had already
known, that most placement agencies seemed more concerned
about a child's race than about his or her problems and
needs. But she was adamant that the Office of Probation
did not have to comply with the discrimination and
prejudice of these agencies. "I object," she said, "to our
probation records gratuitously providing this information
[racial specification] to an agency to be used by them to
maintain a quota system."285 She realized that there were
other means by which the placement agency could obtain such
information. She figured, however, that if these agencies
were put to the task of asking for the information, then a

case could be built to show a pattern of discrimination

 

285 Bolin to John A. Wallace, 31 July 1963, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

116

thereby justifying the withholding of public funds. She
did not disguise her displeasure with Mr. Wallace, who
readily complied with her instructions to issue a directive
that racial designation be excluded from all probation
records including face sheets and probation reports.286 The
Probation Department was, after all, a public agency, and
ought to be held, she thought, to a higher standard of
compliance with the law.

Her efforts did not end with the Department of
Welfare. She led a relentless crusade for children's right
to equal treatment before the law that literally put her at
odds with many Department Heads within City government, and
outside City government. The Salvation Army operated Booth
Memorial Hospital on West Fourteenth Street in New York
City, which also served as a referral facility for pregnant
girls. In a 1947 letter to Judge Bolin, the Territorial
Commander, Mr. Ernest Pugmire invited Bolin to membership
on their proposed Harlem Advisory Board. He told her that
her name had been suggested by their officers and friends
in Harlem "as a person mindful of her responsibilities to
the borough and to its citizens."287

According to Pugmire, the Salvation Army wanted to
share this responsibility with Bolin, and with her advice
help those in need. Unimpressed with the Salvation Army's

gratuitous proposal, Bolin declined their invitation. In

 

285 Ibid.

287 Ernest Pugmire to Bolin, 17 January 1947, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

117

her response of February 4th, 1947, she wrote, "In the
first place, I am out of sympathy with your feeling that a
special Advisory Board is necessary for Harlem while your
other Advisory Boards throughout the city are set up on a
borough basis."288 She continued, "I should be much more
impressed to find the names of some civic-minded Negroes on
your borough Advisory Boards than to be invited to a Jim
Crow Advisory Board for an agency that is city-wide."289
Moreover, she felt all the more opposed to being on any
Advisory Board of the Salvation Army because she had become
aware of, and was investigating, the Jim Crow policy that
the Salvation Army maintained at its Booth Memorial
Hospital. Booth Memorial Hospital was a referral facility
for pregnant girls, but reportedly it segregated the
pregnant Black girls from the pregnant White girls.

Bolin received reports from the Black girls about
their treatment at Booth Memorial. "I have been alarmed,"
she told Mr. Pugmire, "by the reports these girls bring
back of the heavy work they are required to do — lifting
heavy wash from the machines, lifting heavy trays of dishes
and even mopping and waxing floors on their knees during
the advanced stages of their pregnancy."290 She was so
incensed by the reports that she paid a surprise visit to

Booth Memorial to observe the reported conditions for

 

288 Harlem is not a separate borough, but is in the borough of
Manhattan in which there was an existing Advisory Board.

289 Bolin to Ernest Pugmire, 4 February 1947, Box 2, Bolin Papers.
290 Bolin to Ernest Pugmire, 4 February 1947, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

|18

herself. Although she was authorized by law to visit any
institutions to which she sends children, she was
unsuccessful in getting past the door. She was curtly told
that it was inconvenient for her to make an inspection of
the facility since some guests were expected for tea that
day.291 This presumption was, to Bolin, quite telling of
what the facility had to hide. She rebuked the Salvation
Army, and in response to Mr. Pugmire's litany of praises
for his organization, she wrote, "When the Salvation Army
begins to practice its motto 'Service to God Through
Service to Man' without reservations and without
distinction as to the color of 'Man', I shall be happy to
contribute even more of my service than you requested in
your letter."292

In 1943, the Colored Orphan Asylum became a most
unlikely target in Bolin's crusade against segregation.
The Colored Orphan Asylum was established before the Civil
War to meet the needs of African American children who were
excluded from most placement facilities. It was destroyed

by fire as a series of anti—war riots broke out during the

 

291 Ibid.

292 Ibid. In his letter of proposal to Bolin, Pugmire wrote, "Sixty-
seven years ago, the first Salvation Army officers landed in New York
City. Since then, The Army has engaged in numerous activities designed
to serve community needs with a spiritual purpose and with material
service. Our motto has been, in effect, 'Service to God Through
Service to Man.‘ The Salvation Army now operates sixty institutions in
New York City, institutions which have become a vital part of the
community welfare." "The scope of The Army's service is wide,
encompassing the complete span of man's life from pre-natal care to the
operation of homes for the aged....and pays special attention to the
needs of young people and children."

119

summer of 1863 in cities across the North. It was later
rebuilt as segregation in placement facilities still
existed. However, with the passage of the 1951 Brown-
Isaacs Amendment to the City Charter, Bolin questioned the
existence of the Colored Orphan Asylum. In a 1943 letter
to Maceo Thomas, the Chairman of the Colored Orphan Asylum,
she said, "I am interested in knowing what plans the
Colored Orphan Asylum is making to comply with the
amendment to the budget passed by the Board of Estimate
last year prohibiting payment of public money to children's
institutions which discriminate on the basis of color."293

Bolin understood the dilemma of many similarly
situated organizations whose existence was justified
because of de facto segregation against African Americans,
but who were nevertheless violating the anti—segregation
laws, and perpetuating segregation. She believed that
"Before the passage of the Board of Estimate amendment,
there may have been temporary excuse for such a setup even
though it was undemocratic," but insisted that the Colored
Orphan Asylum proceed with all deliberate speed to change
its name and its intake policy regarding the race of

children accepted.294

 

293 Bolin to Maceo Thomas, 18 February 1943, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

294 Ibid. Bolin saw the benefit of political power in segregated
communities like Harlem and Washington Heights, but hoped that one day
groups would not feel like they have to be segregated to exercise real
political power.

|20

She was keenly aware of the needs of the City's
children, and was committed to their best interests. Her
position on the Colored Orphan Asylum was therefore not
intended to deprive African American children of one of the
few facilities completely available to them. Rather, she
intended to effect total integration of ALL placement
facilities. She understood that to allow segregation,
however well-intentioned, was to perpetuate segregation,
however ill-intentioned. Her position was consistent with
her rejection of the Reverend James Robinson's proposal for

an interracial voluntary hospital in Harlem.
Reverend Robinson was part of a Committee to purchase

a hospital that was going out of business. Understanding
Judge Bolin's influence in the City and especially in her
Harlem community, the Committee sought Judge Bolin's input
and endorsement of the proposed hospital. One of the
objectives of the proposed hospital was to "set a pattern
for initiating interracial principle in other hospitals,"

while providing Harlem with "more effecting and appropriate

hospital and medical care."295 Bolin was not convinced that
Harlem needed such a hospital; nor did she agree that the

welfare of the Harlem community would be furthered by such

 

295 The evidence suggests that the hospital which was supposedly going
out of business may have been one which was reluctant to admit African
Americans. By 1943, the Harlem Hospital and some of the other City
hospitals had already demonstrated the interracial principle in its
staffing policies and in its admittance policies. Bolin to the
Reverend James Robinson, 20 December 1943, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

121

a hospital. On the contrary, she thought that the welfare
of the community would be "prejudiced, viciously harmed and
indeed setback many years by such a hospital at this
time."296 In her letter to the Reverend Robinson she said,

If the hospital you have in mind for purchase is
so generous as to want to sell itself for the
purpose of an inter-racial hospital, it might
accomplish the same result, and in more
democratic fashion, by continuing operation and
simply opening its medical and nursing staff, as

well as its Board of Trustees to Negroes.297
She was adamant that such a hospital as that proposed,
would not solve the problems of African American physicians
in respect to hospital connections. As she saw it, "the
number of staff positions open would be so small that it
would benefit only an extremely small percentage of the
Negro physicians in New York."298 In addition, she was
certain that if the "interracial" hospital was established,
then the other voluntary hospitals which admitted African
American patients (after years of resistance) would be
eager to destroy those gains by suggesting that future
African American patients "go to their own hospital in
Harlem." "If segregation is forced on us in the matter of
living quarters," she said, "let us not take steps to

provide it ourselves in the matter of hospital service."299

 

295 Ibid.
297 Ibid.
298 Ibid.
299 Ibid.

In her opinion, the time, energies and money expended
for the so-called "inter-racial" hospital could have been
better utilized in a campaign to open all public and
voluntary hospitals in the City to African American
physicians, nurses and technicians. She informed the
Reverend that "When this is done, the need for your
proposed hospital will have vanished. [Because] Unless it
is done, the establishing of an 'inter-racial' hospital in
Harlem, in my belief, will be a setback to the progress of
our race."300 An ardent integrationist, Bolin resisted any

ventures that undermined city-wide desegregation.
She never faltered in her responsibility to the city's

children. She fought for them on every front. She and
colleague, Justine Polier, recalled how they had persuaded
the New York newspapers to withhold the names of accused
children under sixteen years, and to discontinue the racial

designation of the accused since it was applied solely to

Blacks.301 Several years after the committee's success with
the Press, the insensitivity of Attorney Frank Ortiz almost
erased much of what they had fought for. The committee's
success with the Press did not necessarily translate into
even sensitivity from all legal practitioners.

Following up as she did on children who had appeared

before her, Judge Bolin discovered that Ortiz who had

 

300 Ibid.

123

represented a child, Louis Colon, before her in Brooklyn
Juvenile Term on September 1, 1962, had given an interview
and posed for a picture with the child and his father for a

local newspaper, El Diario. She wrote to Mr. Ortiz and

 

informed him that "It took some of us judges in this court
several years, much correspondence and many conferences to
obtain the consent of our New York newspapers to withhold
from their news items the names of children allegedly or
actually involved in acts leading to their appearance in
the Children's Court." And, she expected that since the
newspapers had scrupulously honored their agreement, then
at the very least the children's representatives should do
the same. She was shocked that Ortiz would permit any
publicity regarding the very child he was assigned to
represent and protect. Her frustration was justified
because, as she explained in her letter to him,

This court extends itself to protect the identity

of children appearing here in the belief that

when they reach maturity they should not be

socially or economically handicapped or

emotionally damaged by newspaper stories

concerning incidents occurring in their less

responsible and less mature years. Nor do we

wish either that some children get a mistaken
idea that they are 'big shots' because their

names have been in the newspapers.302

 

301 Bolin to Justine Wise Polier, 24 October 1978, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

302 Ortiz was given ample warning never to violate the court's
responsibility to protect the children's identity. Bolin to Frank
Ortiz, 6 December 1962, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

124

Her insurgency as a young judge is exemplified in her
crusade against discrimination and segregation. Never
lulled into the slumber and repose of the bench, Judge
Bolin, within her first five years as judge, discovered and
eradicated discriminatory practices never before challenged
by her colleagues. Yet, she was not a maverick in the
sense of working outside of the law. With the full import
of her office, she simply utilized the letter of the law, a
device accessible to all other judges, to create change.
Or, more accurately, she used the full import of her office
to bring private and public agencies within the letter of
the law. What is certain is that, by her uncommon judicial
activism, she risked reappointment to the bench.303 What
set her apart then was her courage to disturb, what Judge
Bruce Wright called, "the timid inertia" of the bench, even
at the risk of professional ruin.3O4

Her forthright activism had repercussions beyond the
halls of justice - beyond the immediacy of petitioner and

respondent. The War Department was aided by the Red Cross

 

303 It is interesting that she faced the most opposition to
reappointment for a second term, when it was within her first term that
she blasted every private and public agency not in compliance with the
law, and the changing times. As discussed in Chapter Two, it was Mayor
Wagner who was most reluctant in reappointing Bolin. Quite possibly,
he was reluctant to have his own appointee criticize his administration
by criticizing its agencies.

304 Each challenge she directed toward the Department of Probation or
the Department of Welfare was indeed a challenge to the current mayoral
administration. The challenges she hurled at the various city agencies
during her first term as judge were in essence aimed at La Guardia's
administration to which she owed her appointment. Bruce McM. Wright,
"A Black Brood on Black Judges," Judicature 57, no. 1 (June-July,
1973), 23.

 

I25

in the disgraceful practice of segregating human blood
along racial lines during World War II. This was just
another way that whites demonstrated their determination
that the war would not alter race relations.305 The process
of storing blood plasma was developed by the African
American scientist, Dr. Charles Drew, but the Red Cross
refused to mix donations of whites and blacks in their
blood banks. Bolin was outraged, as was the entire Black
community.306 She boldly withheld her service and
contributions from the Red Cross in protest. In a 1943
letter of reproach to the General Chairman of the Red Cross
War Fund of Greater New York, Mr. Colby Chester, she
underscored the seriousness of her position by stating that
only "When blood segregation by these Chapters is
discontinued I shall be glad to contribute my service and
my money and urge others to do likewise."307

The Red Cross attempted to diminish their culpability
by deferring to the mandate of the War Department. To be
sure, the Army maintained a policy of segregation, the Navy

recruited African Americans only as messmates, and the

 

305 Steven Lawson, Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics
in America Since 1941 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991), 6-7.

 

306 African Americans supported the war effort, and responded as other
patriotic Americans, but with rampant segregation at home, they
declared the "Double-V" campaign for victories against fascism abroad
and at home. Lawson, Running for Freedom, 6-7.

307 Bolin to Colby M. Chester, General Chairman, 25 February 1943, Box
3, Bolin Papers.

 

126

Marines and Army Air Corps generally excluded thenu308 But,
Judge Bolin felt strongly that even if the War Department
requested that blood be segregated, an organization of
supposed international high repute like the Red Cross
could, and ought to, refuse to participate in, what she saw
as, "undemocratic and scientifically unsound action."309

In her opinion, the Red Cross had "control over any
action taken under its name which divides people instead
uniting them, which saps morale rather than bolsters it
during the time of war."310 She had done her own
investigation, and was informed that the Brooklyn Chapter
of the Red Cross had refused to segregate blood according
to race. She, therefore, saw no merit in the Chairman's
position that the Red Cross was somehow bound by directives
from the War Department. The Red Cross was, after all, an
organization, though quasi—governmental, that received its
financial and moral support from private citizens, to whom
it owed some accountability. According to Bolin, the Red
Cross lacked sufficient courage and determination to stand
up and say it will not advance the war effort by offending
part of the population whose support the War Department and

the Red Cross needed and wanted.

 

308 Steven F. Lawson, Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black
Politics in America Since 1941 (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1991), 5-
7

309 Bolin to Chester, 25 February 1943, Box 3, Bolin papers.
310 Ibid.

127

Bolin consistently pointed out such incompatibility in
a most incisive and preemptory manner. Her sentiments were
echoed in her Commencement speech, "A Standard To Which The
Wise And Honest Can Repair," to the Cheyney State Teachers
College graduating class of 1946. Speaking of the
hypocrisy of a war intended to crush fascism abroad while
maintaining it at home, she challenged the graduates not to
apply a high level of intellectual and moral integrity in
international relations without applying a corresponding
level in domestic affairs. Centered in the "Double-V"
debate of the period, Bolin referred to the racial hatred,
discrimination and segregation, denial of equal educational
and occupational opportunities so rampant in a country
extolling the virtues of democracy abroad. Bolin explained
to the graduates that "It is as incomprehensible as it is
degrading to see how any standard of intellectual and moral
integrity can be maintained while accepting a proscribed
citizenship status for any minority group."311

This class of post-war leaders was therefore being
challenged in a straightforward, clear and unequivocal
manner to be socially responsible, which for Bolin meant
moving "in the direction of making a complete, full,

inclusive, political and economic democracy, both on an

 

311 The war against fascism abroad was won, but the war against its
remnants at home, manifested in the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan,
exhorting hatred against African Americans, and the existence of
lynching, was gaining momentum. "A Standard To Which The Wise And
Honest Can Repair," Commencement Speech at Cheyney State Teachers
College, 1946, page 7, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

128

immediate and on a long—term basis, a living reality."312
To effect the ideals for which the society had sacrificed
so many and so much, she explained that it was imperative
that the "domestic expressions of fascism be eradicated,
completely, effectively, rapidly and ruthlessly." And this
elimination, she believed, could "be accomplished only by
constant day to day effort to achieve it."313

Bolin did not believe in side—line citizenship. Her
own life was a testimony to constructive citizenship. So,
what she hoped to impress upon Cheyney's graduating class
of 1946 was their own social responsibility that was born
of their newly acquired knowledge and inherent power.

Described by her judicial brethren, Judge Cesar
Quinones, as a militant and a fighter, she entered into
public dialogue over housing discrimination. She knew
firsthand of its effects on children and families who
appeared before her in court. Harlem had experienced a
massive cityward migration of southern Blacks after World
War I. From three percent of the population in 1920,
Manhattan's Black population soared to twelve percent by
1930. The influx placed an immediate strain on the
neighborhood, not the least of which was housing.
Reportedly, in 1935 eight Harlem blocks were jammed with

more than 3,000 residents each, with one block holding

 

312 Ibid.
313 Ibid.

129

close to 4,000.314 The overcrowding, unheard of in any
other part of the city, was exacerbated by pervasive racism
in everything from employment to habitable housing.

For his part, Mayor La Guardia did more than any other
mayor to address the problems of this growing community.

La Guardia responded to his Black constituents, and
supported the building of the Harlem River Houses, a
federal project which was stepped up in the aftermath of
the 1935 Harlem riot. However, during his third
administration (1941—1945), La Guardia had to earn Black
support all over again because of, what many saw as, his
disregard for their housing problems.

In April 1943, the City announced the building of
Stuyvesant Town, a new housing complex to be developed with
the COOperation of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
and government as part of a long-term effort to construct
decent low- and middle-income housing that would be needed
in the postwar period. However this effort was tainted by
Metropolitan's discriminatory housing policy which stated
that no Blacks would be allowed as tenants. To such
blatant discrimination, the mayor's response was neither
swift nor responsible. Faced with, what many called, the
dilemma of segregated housing or no housing, La Guardia

being the pragmatist that he was, chose segregated housing.

 

314 As late as 1939, investigators reported that 84 percent of the
housing lacked central heating and more than half of the apartments did
not have private bathrooms. Kessner, La Guardia, page 372; also see
Joe William Trotter, The Great Migration in Historical Perspective
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991)

 

 

130

He decided to accept Metropolitan's contract for Stuyvesant
Town in spite of the existing Brown—Isaacs Amendment to the
City Charter which prohibited race discrimination by any
entity receiving government funding.

In his study of La Guardia and modern New York, Thomas
Kessner writes of two Americas. One was powerful,
prosperous and confident; the other was the slum where
everything flourished that prosperous America denied:
poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, decrepit housing, and an
outspoken angry representative with his arm raised in
perpetual objection.315 Harlem was without a doubt that
other America, and Judge Bolin was, from all accounts, that
representative, or at least one of the representatives,
with arm raised in perpetual objection.

To show her support for a cause that neither Mayors La
Guardia nor Wagner addressed with much seriousness, she
began a letter-writing campaign against segregated housing
that spanned a decade, and targeted all members of the City
Council, the Mayor, and even the President of the United
States. Speaking in the capacity of a Domestic Relations
Court Judge, she implored the President of the City
Council, the Honorable Joseph Sharkey to vote affirmatively
on the Brown-Isaacs bill prohibiting racial and religious
discrimination in City-aided housing developments. Hers

was one of many letters that Sharkey received, but it was

 

315 Kessner, La Guardia, 134.

 

131

the only one from a Domestic Relations Court Judge. One
can only imagine that he was moved by her testimony of how
poor housing impacted on the lives and possibilities of the
young people who appeared before her. "I feel obliged to
tell you," she said in her letter to the City Council
President, "that as a judge in the Domestic Relations Court
I see daily the effects not only of inadequate housing but
of segregated housing on families and children."316

She explained further that she had seen little bodies
dwarfed by an overcrowded, substandard home, and that she
had also seen little minds warped by the knowledge that "we
are considered somehow different and inferior. We cannot
even live any place we want."317 She felt sure that with
that obvious injustice as a starting point, festering over
a period of time, that it was perhaps inevitable that there
should be finally rebellion against law and authority. She
reminded the City Council President of his duty to each
resident of the City whom she believed ought "to feel that
all public monies are used for the benefit of all people"
and not be "humiliated by the knowledge that his taxes are
being used by his City to perpetuate the evils, both
material and psychological, of discrimination."318

The City Council President soon lent his name to the

1943 Brown-Isaacs Amendment which became known as the

 

316 Bolin to the Honorable Joseph T. Sharkey, President of the City
Council, 18 December 1950, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

317 Ibid.
318 Ibid.

132

Sharkey-Brown—Isaacs bill. Bolin had apparently only just
begun. She wrote to Mayor Wagner, who had reluctantly
reappointed her in 1949, urging his strong support of the
Sharkey-Brown-Isaacs bill. She stated quite bluntly that
the most compelling reason for supporting the bill was
simply justice. Hinting at the rhetoric of Wagner's
campaign politics, she said, "We talk incessantly of the
equality of all Americans and the dignity of man. Here is
a small opportunity to put in practice some of our
professions."319 She seemed able to disclose the gap
between his rhetoric and his routine, a tactic she used

with other public office-holders.
The real estate boards had reportedly promoted vicious

and distorted propaganda about the financial and social
horrors of integrated housing. Many politicians were
seemingly under their spell. And, it seemed like
individual prejudices were only deepened by the fear of no
longer being able to choose one's neighbors. As Bolin saw
it, the general experience of everyone who rents or has
ever rented an apartment in New York City, has never
included being consulted by a landlord about prospective
neighbors. She was confident that New Yorkers would not be

so insecure as to fear the enriching experience of living

 

319 Wagner had become mayor in 1945 when La Guardia rejected withdrew
from the race. Bolin to the Mayor Robert F. Wagner, 9 September 1957,
Box 3, Bolin Papers.

133

among people of different racial and religious backgrounds.
Reiterating her concerns about the impact of segregated
housing on the welfare of children and families, she
explained to the Mayor that

In addition to the justice and democracy of the
bill it would eliminate the sad and destructive
effects of discrimination in housing - anti-
social children rebelling against patent
discrimination as well as unwholesome living
conditions, the criminal adult similarly
reacting, segregated schools, human beings
diseased by slum living, the blatant exploitation
by unscrupulous real estate interests of people
they consider trapped because of their race,
religion or national origin.320

As a Domestic Relations Judge, and one who was intimately
involved in securing justice and help for those who
appeared before her, she was in a position to draw those
conclusions.

Many of the men, women, and children who came into her
courtroom returned to see her, though more often she went
to see them. As she saw it, "You can't deal with human
beings and forget them as soon as you leave a court
room."321 Her sense of social responsibility did not begin
and end on the bench, but was very much an integral part of
her entire life. Bolin recognized, not only the social

ills of segregation, but also its threat to democracy, a

 

320 The real estate boards had much to gain by preying on the
prejudices of some and the need of others who had limited options.
This type of "red-lining" was not restricted to New York City. Ibid.

321 The record is clear and replete with examples of her follow—up
attitude. See the earlier discussion about Booth Memorial Hospital,
the Department of Probation and Department of Welfare. Sidney Fields,
"Only Human," Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

134

concern she hoped every citizen would understand. Her
letters were selective, targeting as it did those citizens
who held public office. Writing from the bench, she in
essence put the entire weight of her office behind her,
while putting those public office holders on notice. She
sent no letters to the laymen or laywomen of Harlem
community or the larger City community, because it was
their hue and cry that had given birth to the bill in the
first place. But, those in office who could help pass or
kill the Sharkey-Brown-Isaacs bill had to be reminded that
there was at least one public servant who stood with the
community.

By the end of 1957, the municipal Sharkey—Brown-Isaacs
bill had passed outlawing discrimination in multiple—family
dwellings in the five boroughs. This was very important,
especially for African Americans, who had grave difficulty
purchasing a house. As a result, African Americans
resorted quite often to renting, having no access to the
same ease of financing a home as did a white person of
comparable income.322

Uncommonly outspoken, this five feet two jurist was
equally caustic with the spoken word as she was with the
written word. One of her more militant and memorable

stands against discrimination was occasioned by a 1944

 

322 Oscar Handlin, The Newcomers: Negroes and Puerto Ricans in a
Changing Metropolis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), page
88.

 

 

135

invitation to be the guest of honor and principal speaker
at a dinner given by the City of Poughkeepsie in observance
of American Brotherhood or United Americans week. This
dinner to which the public was invited, was arranged by
such prominent Poughkeepsie residents as Municipal Judge
Corbally and Mrs. Ruby Kennedy of the Vassar College
faculty, and was held at the Nelson House which stood as a
model and reminder of Jim Crow in Poughkeepsie.323

Perhaps, memories of how Poughkeepsie had treated its
native daughter, and other African Americans, had long
since faded from the city's collective memory. Or, maybe
local custom had so changed that Bolin's experience from
twelve years ago was eclipsed by Poughkeepsie's progressive
politics which integrated its African American citizens.324
What was certain was that Poughkeepsie intended to honor
its native daughter who had made them proud. Its
celebration of American Brotherhood week seemed like the
perfect venue for this honor. Bolin accepted the
invitation and the honor, but with a shrewdness

characteristic of her style. She turned the attention away

 

323 Like many boarding houses and hotels, the Nelson House
discriminated against African Americans. Even the most well-known
artists and performers like Marian Anderson and Langston Hughes were
refused accommodations at the Nelson House during their visits to
Poughkeepsie. Arranged by the United Americans committee of
Poughkeepsie, the event was co-chaired by Mrs. W. W. Smith, 2nd and
Dean H. Temple of Vassar College. Poughkeepsie New Yorker 17 February
1944, Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

324 Chapter One discusses her early life in Poughkeepsie and her, and
her father’s, experience with discrimination in Poughkeepsie.

136

from herself and her accomplishments and onto her host, the
City of Poughkeepsie.

Mindful of the discriminatory practices of government
agencies, and colleges in Poughkeepsie, Bolin told the
audience that "An annual brotherhood dinner is of
absolutely no significance or of no assistance unless it
stimulates all of us to work unceasingly and tirelessly
throughout the year toward a brotherhood in action and in
deed."325 She then reminded them that it was twelve years
ago that she left Poughkeepsie to start practicing law in
New York, because, even with the success of her father and
brother, she did not see the opportunity in Poughkeepsie to
pursue her aspirations and ambitions. She told the
audience that when she is asked why she left such a
beautiful town as Poughkeepsie, she is forced to answer,
"Yes it is physically beautiful, but I hate fascism whether
it is practiced by Germans, Japanese, or by Americans and
Poughkeepsie is fascist to the extent of deluding itself
that there is a superiority among human beings by reason
solely of color or race or religion."326

What might have been for many an opportunity to extol
the virtues of hard work and determination in the face of
discrimination, became for Bolin yet another platform for

exposing injustice. As the guest of honor in her hometown

 

325 Poughkeepsie New Yorker 23 February 1944, Clipping File, Box 3,
Bolin Papers.

325 Ibid.

 

137

where her father and brother were distinguished lawyers, a
few gracious remarks about her own success, and the success
of her father and brother were probably expected. However,
Bolin was mindful not to have her exceptional life be
mistaken for the common experience of the majority of
African Americans in Poughkeepsie. She therefore exposed
the degree to which her life was indeed the exception by
focusing on just how poorly Poughkeepsie had treated most

of its African American citizens.
Querying the degree of progress that Poughkeepsie had

made, and simultaneously challenging the city to action,
she said that when asked about the status of minorities in
Poughkeepsie that

I truly should like to reply with pride that
there is at least one Negro on the bench, that
there are Negroes on the staff of the District
Attorney, in the Police and Fire Departments, in
the City Council and in every City Department. I
should like to say that Negro physicians are
welcomed on the staffs of the Poughkeepsie
hospitals, that Negro nurses are employed there,
that there are Negroes teaching in the schools,
that in industrial plants Negroes are employed in

skilled positions according to their ability.327
But, to ask the question was to answer it. Poughkeepsie
was no more inclined to share its opportunities with its
African American citizens in 1944 than it had when she
left. She told the audience that she still could not say
that the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and the

Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) of Poughkeepsie

 

327 Ibid.

138

"are no longer hypocrites and no longer degrade the word
Christian, that they practice true brotherhood which knows
no limitations because of color or race or religion."328
Sadly, accusations that were leveled against the YMCA
and the YWCA twenty-five years earlier still had currency.

As one editorial in the Advocate declared

 

Much as we would like to disguise the fact that
the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. movement among Colored
people is a form of segregation, we are forced to
admit that the funds contributed by white
philanthropists to aid in maintaining Colored
branches are contributed to preclude the
possibility of Colored men and women desiring to
gain admission and membership in the white
branches.329

Realizing that nothing had changed, Bolin urged the good
men and women of Poughkeepsie to "break down the traditions
of this city and to begin the practice of democratic
principles," because "Brotherhood" as she saw it was
pointless unless Poughkeespie ended its intolerance.33O

It is debatable whether the Judge succeeded in shaming
the City into the "practice of democratic principles."
What is interesting, and much more than a coincidence, is
that in exactly one year after Bolin's keynote address at
the American Brotherhood dinner, her father, Gaius Charles

Bolin, who had practiced law in Poughkeepsie and throughout

 

328 Ibid.

329 Editorial, The Advocate, Cleveland, Ohio, 1 May 1920, as reprinted
in Gerda Lerner, ed., Black Women in White America: A Documentary
History (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 484.

 

 

330 Poughkeepsie New Yorker, 23 February 1944, Clipping File, Box 3,
Bolin Papers.

 

139

Dutchess County since 1891, at age 80 was elected the
Dutchess County Bar Association President, becoming the
first African American to fill that position.331 Though
Gaius Bolin was justifiably proud and happy about his
election, he pondered the distance that Poughkeepsie had
traveled, and concluded that it had much further to go. He
believed that although African Americans had come a long
way, they still had the hardest fight on their hands of any
since the Civil War.332 What his daughter saw was that
Poughkeepsie had a fight on its hands because the winds of
change were blowing strongly from the lungs of its youth.
She believed in the dreams of children, all children,
whether African American, Jewish, Catholic or Puerto Rican.
She believed that the hopes of these children were a direct
challenge to the City of Poughkeepsie and like-minded
cities across the United States, because, as she said,
"They too study the Constitution and the history of
America," and "unlike the United States Supreme Court
during much of our history, they take it literally [and]
they mean to have liberty and a full, rich life, free of
want, oppression and inequality of opportunity, whether
economics, social or political."333

In 1943, she was a member of a city-wide committee of

community leaders, along with Delaney and Polier of the

 

331 Herald Tribune 20 February 1945, Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin
Papers.

332 Ibid.
333 Ibid.

140

Domestic Relations Court, who confronted the Metropolitan
Press about the manner in which it reported crime committed
by Blacks.334 The memorandum, which criticized the press
for failing to live up to its responsibility to improve the
social conditions and racial relations in the city, stated
in part:

It is noted with alarm that the Metropolitan
Press has recently played up crime happenings in
Harlem to the extent that the impression is now
city-wide that crime among Negroes in Harlem is
on the increase....It is to be noted that almost
invariably when a crime is committed by a Negro
the fact that it was a Negro who committed the
crime is so reported that the Negro and the crime
are tied together to the extent that whenever
people think of one they think of the other....
consider the howl that would go up over the land
if the press were to report "MIKE O'CONNOR, IRISH
CATHOLIC KILLER" OR "JAKE ENSTINE, JEW KILLER" OR
"JOE THOMAS, ESPISCOPALIAN KILLER....AS it is
now, only the Negro is singled out in this
manner.335

The memorandum demonstrated just how dangerous this kind of
reporting was to race relations, and, by extension, just
how dangerous it was to the well-being of the city. The

memo described how the treatment of Harlem crime had caused

 

334 Other committee members included Samuel Battle, Parole Commissioner
of the City of New York; Lester Granger, Executive Secretary of the
National Urban League (NUL); Reverend John H. Johnson, Rector of St.
Martin's Church; Austin R. McCormack, former Commissioner of Correction
of the City of New York; Walter White, Executive Secretary of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and
others from varying offices of the YWCA, YMCA, NUL. But, Bolin,
Delaney and Polier were the only Domestic Relations Court judges
involved. "Memorandum to Metropolitan Press," with letter from Peyton
F. Anderson, Chairman of the Harlem branch of the YMCA, to all
committee members, 6 April 1943, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

335 Ibid.

141

black youth to be arrested without a warrant while white
youth engaged in similar behavior escaped arrest. The
committee deemed the press complicitous in exacerbating
friction between black youth and white youth, who formed
clubs (gangs) to oppose each other and, to protect the
interests of each racial group as a result of the press's
negligent reporting of crimes committed in Harlem.

This committee did not restrict its concerns to the
immediate impact on New York City race relations. It
actually utilized this forum of criticism to call attention
to the disproportionate representation of African Americans
in the armed forces, upon whom the coverage of Harlem crime
had "a demoralizing effect."336 This was not the first time
that this committee had taken the metropolitan press to
task. Years earlier it had fought, and forced the
metropolitan press to begin "capitalizing the word Negro"
in its reporting.337 Clearly, the activism of the committee
of Domestic Relations Court judges, NAACP and NUL officers,
Department of Correction and Probation commissioners, and
church officials was intended to do more than simply
condemn the biased reporting of the press. It exploited
the recklessness of the Metropolitan Press to call public
attention to the assault not just on Black youth, but the

assault on the Black community in general.

 

336 Ibid.

337 This is reminiscent of a similar protest against a local
Poughkeepsie newspaper at age fifteen. Polier to Bolin, 24 October
1978, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

142

Harlem had erupted eight years earlier in 1935, and
although the riot was lit by the pilferage of a 10-cent
pen—knife, it was made explosive by years of social,
political and economic neglect.338 The 1943 memo, addressed
to press and public alike, even warned of a recurrence
should the voice of the Harlem community be ignored. "The
riot and its results," said the Committee, "is a page in
history which no citizen of New York City can view with
pride." However, the committee believed that it
accomplished "the purpose for which constructive forward
looking citizens had appealed in vain." Clearly referring
to the belated attention given to Harlem by the city
fathers, the committee reiterated that "It is the duty and
responsibility of all of us to prevent its recurrence."339

Bolin fueled her compassion on the bench with her
personal experiences of marriage, motherhood, of being
twice widowed, a working single parent, almost unemployed,
and hindered by the combination of gender and race. Yet,
she did not think that "a woman is necessarily better than

a man as a Domestic Relations judge." She believed that it

 

338 A sixteen-year old Puerto Rican youth, Lino Rivera, admitted to
stealing a 10-cent penknife from the Kress store on 125th Street in
Harlem. He bit a floor guard who tried to subdue him. The police and
ambulance were summoned. In the crowd that gathered outside the store,
rumors of abuse and death spread. The rumors were believable given the
volatile relationship that existed between the community and the
police, and feelings between white Harlem storekeepers and neighborhood
residents had been strained for many months after a series of efforts
to force local stores to hire blacks. The rumors this particular night
stirred the pent-up rage, and what erupted was the Harlem riot of 1935.
See generally, Kessner, La Guardia, 368-369.

 

339 "Memorandum to Metropolitan Press," Box 3, Bolin Papers.

143

was more a matter of aptitude and temperament.340 In an
emotionally-charged homicide case, Bolin's judicial
temperament was tested. The facts as reported in the New

York Daily News simply stated that just before Christmas in

 

1978, a juvenile male killed his friend during an argument
over a bicycle. The newspaper reported further that as the
juvenile, who had never been in trouble before, stood
before Judge Bolin awaiting disposition, the father of the
murdered boy pleaded to be heard. Judge Bolin obliged, and
the father, it is reported, told the court that he had
prayed to find it in his heart to forgive the boy who had
deprived him of his son, and that his prayer had been
answered. Anticipating the conventional ruling for a
homicide not committed in self—defense, the father
reportedly reminded Judge Bolin that his only son could not
be brought back no matter how she ruled, and begged her not
to deprive the parents of the arrested boy of their only
child. The newspaper reported that there was not a dry eye

in the courtroom, including the Judge's.
Judge Bolin's "quiet wisdom" in this particular case

recalled the biblical story of Solomon. In this instance
Solomon was a black woman judge, and she decided to send
the boy home on probation. Years later when asked to

comment on the case, Judge Bolin proudly remarked that

 

340 Sidney Fields, "Only Human," Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

144

after that appearance the boy was never in trouble again.341
Other women judges have captured the attention of the press
with their sympathetic and sensitive rulings regarding
young people. Being strong proponents of child welfare

laws, these judges, like Bolin, believed in equal rights
"but not equal wrongs."342 However, in deference to the
admonition that "the decider must cerebrate rather than
emote about what he [or she] is deciding," many criticized
such rulings as too emotional, and not based on the merits
of the case. The following statement from an outstanding
New York attorney typifies the way many people viewed the
performance of women as lawyers and judges:

Women are too emotional to make good lawyers. I

know, I have had them on my staff. I have had

them as Opponents and I have even tried cases

before women judges. They are all the same.

Inevitably, they let emotion supplant cold logic
and hard facts on which law is based.343

The sweeping declarations of the above statement recall
Beverly Blair Cook's observation that to speak of a

different attitude of women on the bench is to speak of

 

341 Like many other such cases involving juveniles, the records remain
sealed to protect the youth's identity and delinquency. Sidney Fields,
"Legacy of a Family Court Judge," The New York Daily News, January,
1978.

342 Morello, Invisible Bar, 226.

 

 

343 Bolin refuted that argument by calling for more women, especially
African American women to take up the law. Alvin White, "Why Aren't

There More Women Lawyers," The Afro-American, (February 21, 1959): 1,
Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

145

women's different status in society.344 To the extent that
women judges behave differently they are responding from
the gendered experience of women as a group. Yet, to
equate difference with emotionality is to truly miss an
opportunity to discuss the particularity of justice from
one tribunal to another. Judge Bolin refuted the
generalizations of this New York attorney and those of his
ilk. She adhered to the Family Court's "parens patriae"
interest which privileged the preventive approach over the
purely punitive approach of the criminal courts.

As originally conceived, the Juvenile Court, apart
from the physical separation of the child from the adult
offender, inaugurated the concept of the court as a social
rather than a penal or police agency.345 Accordingly, it
repudiated as a contradiction in terms the idea of a
"juvenile criminal." In line with this philosophy, in
1924, 25 years after the inauguration of the Juvenile Court
movement in Chicago and Denver, the state of New York
initiated a separate Children's Court. It was to reach out
beyond the police system into the community for cooperative
effort with child-care and other social agencies. And,

disposition was to be made on the basis of the particular

 

344 Beverly Blair Cook, "Women as Judges," in Beverly B. Cook, Leslie
F. Goldstein, et al., ed. Women in the Judicial Process (American
Political Science Association, 1988), 21.

345 As described by Albert Deutsch in "Our Rejected Children," in "The
Experience of Domestic Relations Court of the City of New York in
Relation to The Proposed Unified Family Court," 5 April 1954, Speeches
Folder, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

146

child's personality regardless of the character of the
offense.346 Accordingly, Bolin operated within the confines
of the "fundamental fairness" mandated by the due process
clause, and presided over juvenile proceedings with great
informality and flexibility - a manner "fundamentally
different" from that of an adult criminal prosecution.347
On the bench she had always tried to find Solomon's
wisdom for those human tangles that even good laws failed
to address. Her ruling in the aforementioned case was
therefore compatible with her own understanding of what the
Court's philosophy on children should be. She believed
that "almost any child who has become delinquent can be
rehabilitated if given proper care and attention at the
right time." Although she agreed that much depended upon
the cooperation that is given by parents and teachers.348
Ruling as she did, she essentially challenged the Court to

respect its philosophy of non-punitive and individualized

 

346 Hearings were to be instituted by petition rather than by formal
complaints or indictments as with criminal cases, and were to be
informal. See generally, Sol Rubin, Juvenile Offenders and the Juvenile
Justice System (New York: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1986), 1-14.

 

 

347 Writing for the majority in Schall v. Martin (1984), a case
questioning the constitutionality of a New York statute authorizing
pretrial detention of accused juvenile delinquents, Justice Rehnquist
noted that the state's primary interest in the welfare of children made
juvenile proceedings particularly unique. The vocabulary of the
Juvenile Court also symbolized this uniqueness that uses "Petition
instead of complaint, summons instead of warrant, initial hearing
instead of arraignment, finding of involvement instead of conviction,
disposition instead of sentence." See Sol Rubin, Juvenile Offenders and
the Juvenile Justiceegystem (New York: Oceana Publications, Inc.,
1986), especially pages 1, and 19-20.

 

 

 

348 Julius Adams, "Meet Justice Jane M. Bolin! The Only Negro Woman
Judge In the World's Largest City," New York Amsterdam News, January
29, 1944, page 7A, Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

147

justice which considered a child's background more
important than the facts of a given incident.349 "Every
child who comes before the court needs attention," she
said, "and his case must be heard and judgment made in view
of all the factors of personality and environment entering
into that particular child's life."350

She saw the Juvenile Court system as ideally
representing, what Roscoe Pound called, the "socialization
of justice," or a symbol of "personalized justice." But
she believed that notwithstanding some substantial
achievements, the juvenile court and the domestic relations
court movement came up short both in terms of the concepts
of its early advocates and of its full potentialities.351
This was so because, as she saw it, the court had not been
properly implemented with adequate staff and services due
primarily to "short—sighted, tight-fisted, budgetary

authorities who consistently appear uninformed of, or

 

349 In determining disposition, the court places great reliance on the
social and clinical report prepared by the probation officer to whom
the case is usually assigned for "social study." The social study
embodies the juvenile court's emphasis on inquiring into the child's
background and its attempt to apply the social and behavioral sciences
to diagnosing and dealing with the problems behind the child's errant
conduct. Most juvenile court judges have a broad discretion in
disposing of cases, being empowered, according to Rubin, to dismiss the
case, warn the juvenile, fine him, place him on probation, arrange for
restitution, refer him to an agency or treatment facility, or commit
him to an institution. Rubin, Juvenile Offenders, especially Chapter
1

350 Emma Bugbee, "Justice Jane M. Bolin Shuns Glib Diagnoses of Child
Crime," New York Herald Tribune, 18 April 1943, Clipping File, Box 3,
Bolin Papers.

 

 

351 "Lecture to Bar Association of New York," 5 April 1954, Speeches
Folder, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

148

indifferent to, the type of preventive, corrective and
rehabilitative service the court was set up to render."352
In the more routine cases involving petitions for
child support, custody, and visitation Bolin demonstrated
the same commitment to "the best interests of the child."

In Langerman v. Langerman (1951), the father of two minor

 

children opposed the request made by his ex-wife, who was
the custodial parent, for an order of support over and
above the provisions made at the time of their divorce in
Nevada. In this case, Judge Bolin ruled that the fifty
dollars ($50) per week plus medical expenses for the two
children and the twenty-three hundred dollars ($2,300)
voluntary contribution made the year before (1951) did not
constitute fair and reasonable support according to the
means of the father who had a net annual income after taxes
of forty-six thousand, seven hundred and eighty-four
dollars and twenty-eight cents ($46,784.28).353

Beatrice Hoffman, in her study of changes in the
Domestic Relations Court, found that quite often the
attitude of male judges, attorneys, and spouses which leave
the children with the woman did not assure them enough

support.354 This was not the case in Bolin's courtroom.

 

352 The early "fragmentation of jurisdiction," between the Children's
Court and the Family Court often frustrated its implementation - hence
her protracted campaign for a unified Family Court. Ibid.

353 Langerman v. Langerman, 116 N.Y.S.2d 420 (1952).

354 Beatrice Hoffman, "Changes in Domestic Relations Court," in
Winifred L. Hepperle and Laura Crites, eds., Women in the Courts
(Virginia: National Center for State Courts, 1978), 136-159.

 

 

149

Ever mindful of the economic realities women faced, Bolin
was sensitive to the precarious position in which a
divorced mother with children could find herself. But,
relying first and foremost on what was "best for the
children," she made a ruling that was satisfactory to
neither parent. With an acute sensitivity to the
children's accustomed lifestyle which their father had
maintained, but which their mother could not afford, she
amended the original support decree to better meet the
"needs of the children" and to reflect the means of the
father.355 .As such, the original award of fifty dollars per
week support for two children was increased to one hundred
and fifty dollars ($150) per week.

The fairness of Bolin's ruling is evident in the
substance of her amended award which was half of the three
hundred dollars ($300) per week requested by the
petitioner/mother. Judge Bolin reasoned, "today's order is
made substantially less in the hope it will encourage the
respondent [father] to continue voluntarily to provide the
children with occasional toys or whatever gifts will
satisfy him most," since "He feels justifiably that he

would like the children to receive some contributions

 

355 See generally Langerman where prior to the separation of the
parents the father maintained the children in a Rye, New York house
with gardens, a private swimming pool, three full-time and at least
three part-time employees. After the parents' separation, the children
were living with their mother in an apartment where the girl shares a
bedroom with the maid and the boy sleeps in a room with the bed next to
a pipe and has access to the bathroom only through his mother's bedroom
or through the room occupied by the maid and his sister.

150

1k]

’71

directly from him."356 Her ruling was upheld on the
respondent/father's appeal to question the nature and
extent of the exclusive jurisdiction of the Family Court to
order support of children after a divorce has been procured
outside the state of New York.

In her courtroom justice was not a woman blindfolded,
but a jurist with eyes wide open to the nuances of each
case. This case also points to the diversity of the cases
Bolin handled. True, many of the cases that came before

her involved many persons from Harlem, as the New York

 

Timee reported at the time of her appointment, but by no
means was her court calendar restricted to Harlem's African
American community, or to any particular ethnic, racial or
economic group. "I am a judge, not for Harlem, nor the
children of Harlem," she once said, "but for the whole city
and for all children who are in trouble."357

Her assignment took her into the five boroughs of New
York City (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten
Island), and into the Children's Court and Family Court of
each. She was therefore acutely familiar with the city's
diverse population, a characteristic she found wanting in
many of the city's judges. As testimony to her brand of
justice and to her commitment to saving children instead of

drowning them in the system of adult criminality, Judge

 

356 Langerman.

357 Emma Bugbee, "Justice Jane M. Bolin Shuns Glib Diagnoses of Child
Crime," New York Herald Tribune 18 April 1943, Clipping File, Box 3,
Bolin Papers.

 

151

Bolin publicly denounced the 1978 New York Juvenile
Offender Law. The New York Juvenile Offender Law, as
enacted, permitted thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year
old offenders to be tried publicly for felonies in the
Criminal and Supreme Courts, where they could receive
longer sentences than could be given in the Family Court.358
Within three months of the law's enactment Bolin would
retire, but that did not diminish her displeasure and

disappointment with the statute. She warned,

It's a retrogression. I think it is symptomatic
of a society that doesn't give priority to its
children. It would rather have this kind of law
instead of putting money where it should be put,
correcting the social and economic conditions

where children live.359
She understood that violence by juveniles was increasing,
and even acknowledged that she had never seen anything like
the increased violence that was so rampant in the city
during the decades of the seventies. But she was
unyielding in her belief that the state's stricter juvenile

justice law was not the answer. She felt that the course

 

358 In New York, the jurisdictional age for the Family Court was 16 in
the case of a child charged with delinquent act; in the case of a child
alleged to be a person in need of supervision, the jurisdictional age
was 16 for males and 18 for females. For these the court had exclusive
jurisdiction. But no exclusive jurisdiction, as of 1978, for children
13 or older charged with second degree murder and children 14 or older
charged with second degree murder, felony murder, kidnapping in the
first degree, arson in the first or second degree, assault in the first
degree, manslaughter in the first degree, rape in the first degree,
sodomy in the first degree, aggravated sexual abuse, burglary in the
first or second degree, robbery in the first or second degree,
attempted murder, or attempted kidnapping in the first degree, unless
such case is transferred to the juvenile court from the criminal court.
See Rubin, Juvenile Offenders, "Appendix B," 101-102.

 

359 "Honors and Awards" Folder, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

152

that was chosen in the enactment of the Juvenile Offender
Law was more convenient than the more difficult alternative
of "a many-faceted, highly financed attack on the social,
economic, and family problems responsible for their
delinquency with concerted efforts to rehabilitate and
reclaim our children."360 Inherent in her criticism of the
Juvenile Offender Law was a criticism of what she perceived
to be a glib diagnosis of child crime. She believed that
one would be remiss to state offhand either the causes of,
or cure for, juvenile delinquency, because there were so
many causes and no one cure. The implication that economic
factors - such as a mother's need to work — alone accounted
for juvenile delinquency was not sound, she said. The
forces that drag a child into trouble, she emphasized, were

far more complicated than that.
Her years of contact with these cases had taught her

that emotional factors in the home, stresses in the child's
own personality, and influences outside the home also
contributed to the tragic upheaval.361 "I get very
distressed and dismayed," she declared, "when I hear
psychiatrists and social workers handing out easy answers,
saying it's because of the wars children have seen, or the
violent programs on television, or because violence is as

American as apple pie." "Those answers are just too

 

350 "Remarks by Judge Bolin on occasion of her Retirement, 7 December
1978," "Honors and Awards" Folder, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

153

facile," she thought, "I can't accept any of them."362 She
also held fast to her belief that society as a whole had a
responsibility to its children, and stated such in the
following newspaper interview:

The failure is ours. You and I and all of us
haven't worked out a program to meet it. Only a
small start has been made. There's no blackout
on human weakness. We can't stop thinking about
it.363

Judge Bolin's commitment to justice and equality, and
her concern and love for children, are two significant
columns that structure her philosophy. This in part
explains her choice to remain on the Family Court bench
although eminently qualified to serve on any court. She
believed that she would make her best contribution in a
court designed to protect children and families. She once
said, "I'd rather see if I can help a child than settle an
argument between adults over money."364 This explains why,
in spite of numerous campaigns to "elevate" her to "more
prestigious" courts, she declined nominations as early as
1949 for judicial service in other tribunals. In a letter
to the Philadelphia Municipal Court judge, Theodore O.
Spaulding, Bolin thanked him for his nomination in the
matter of a Federal Judgeship, but assured him that she was

not interested because she felt that she could render the

 

36l Emma Bugbee, "Glib Diagnoses."
362 Judy Klemesrud, "For A Remarkable Judge."
363 Sidney Fields, "Only Human," Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

364 Sidney Fields, "Legacy of a Family Court Judge," Box 3, Bolin
Papers.

154

greatest service in the Family Court guarding the rights of
women and children, two of society's most unprotected
groups.365

She was committed to making the law an instrument of
fairness, but did not confine her activism to the physical
halls of justice. A militant integrationist, she
confronted inequality throughout the city, in every office
of government and private sector without regard for the
security of reappointment. Her activism over the course of
four decades is therefore nothing less than a crusade.
What follows is yet another chapter in this crusade. She
was a leader in the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) who never lost her
respect for, and responsibility to, the masses of African
Americans who were the foundation of the organization. Her
practice of "participatory democracy" went against the
grain of the elitist leadership in the NAACP. But she
remained consistent in her commitment to equality,
regardless of class, race, or gender, even at the risk of

alienation.

 

365 Spaulding was elevated to the Superior Court as the first black
appellate court judge in Philadelphia, and indeed in Pennsylvania.
Bolin to Theodore Spaulding, 23 August 1949, Box 3, Bolin Papers; also
see Segal, Blacks in the Law, page 30-31.

 

155

Chapter 5

PERSONA NON GRATA:
THE HONORABLE JANE MATILDA BOLIN AND THE NAACP, 1936-1950

The National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) has always boasted a strong female
presence. From its inception women, both Black and White,
have played key roles.366 They numbered among those who
signed the Call for the National Negro Conference in 1909
that led to the formation of the NAACP, which was organized
in response to two days of racial violence in Springfield,
Illinois in August 1908. Of the founding members they
comprised a full third, representing leadership in
suffrage, settlement-house work, child-labor activism, and

racial reform.367 Two were African American women. They

 

355 Dorothy Salem, To Better Our World (Brooklyn, New York: Carlson
Publishing, Inc., 1990). For example, Frances Keyser, Mary Church
Terrell, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett served on the 21-member Executive
Committee with 5 White women, while the 66-member General Committee
included Maria Baldwin of Boston, Maritcha Lyons and Mary Talbert of
New York, and Elizabeth Carter, leader of the New Bedford club. Salem
finds that most secondary sources about the NAACP are of little help
concerning the role of African American women. She notes that Charles
Flint Kellogg's NAACP: The National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967) seldom mentions
the Black female role, except in footnotes and, even then, she finds
that female names are often misspelled, incomplete, or not identified
as African American. For example, sources differ with regard to the
number of signers and women. Kellogg's NAACP, pages 297-98, numbers
the signers at sixty with seven noted African American leaders,
including Mary Terrell and Ida Wells-Barnett. However, Wilson Record,
"Negro Intellectual Leadership in the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People: 1910—1940," Phylon 18 (Fall, 1956), page
380, states "Only one Negro woman of note, Ida Wells-Barnett, was among
the signers of the call." Salem wonders whether Record was simply
unaware of Terrell's identity or unaware of her significance.

 

 

 

367 These women included Jane Addams, founder of the Hull House
Settlement in Chicago and a female reform network of full- and part-
time residents; Florence Kelley, founder of the Consumer's League; Mary
White Ovington, leader in the Consumer's League, Social Reform Club,
and founder of Greenpoint Settlement; Sophinisba Breckinridge, Edith

156

were Mary Church Terrell of Washington, DC and Ida B.
Wells-Barnett of Chicago, both of whom actively
participated in the National Association of Colored Women
as leaders, speakers, and liaisons with local reform
organizations.368

From all accounts, Black women predominated in the
organization in traditional female roles as fund-raisers
and proselytizers, which did not generally lead to greater
influence in the national headquarters.359 Although, as
historian Dorothy Salem explains "in so doing, Black women
played a significant role in tying the NAACP to the
communities and, in turn, created a Black-led NAACP."37o
Still, as Thomas Holt notes, the singular irony is that a
racewoman like "Wells-Barnett, the most prominent voice
opposing lynching over the preceding decade and the most

persistent advocate of a national organization to combat

 

Abbott, and Grace Abbott, social service activists; Ellen Gates Starr,
cofounder of Hull House; and Alice Hamilton, public health crusader.
Salem, To Better Our World.

368 Both were active in interracial organizations. Terrell was a
participant and speaker in the New York Social Reform Club and the
National American Woman Suffrage Association, and was also one of the
charter members of the Constitution League founded by John Milholland,
a White reformer and philanthropist, to protect the constitutional
rights of Black Americans. Wells-Barnett worked closely with the likes
of Jane Adams and Sophinisba Breckinridge in the Frederick Douglass
Center, and participated in the National American Woman Suffrage
Association also, all while on her anti-lynching crusade. See Dorothy
Salem, "Black Women and the NAACP, 1909-1922: An Encounter With Race,
Class, and Gender," in Kim Marie Vaz, ed., Black Women in America
(California: SAGE Publications, 1995), 56-57.

369 Mary Church Terrell served on the Board of Directors in 1912-1914.
Salem, "Black Women and the NAACP," 54-70.

370 Ibid, 54-70, see especially page 59.

 

 

157

racial oppression, was not among the leaders of the
NAACP. "371

It is therefore significant that a generation later,
Jane Bolin, an African American woman of equal vocality and
singular judicial prominence, would be among the national
leadership of the NAACP. Yet strangely enough, it was that
"positioning" within the NAACP leadership that provoked a
public intra-organizational conflict (the likes of which
had not been seen since DuBois's dismissal in 1934) that
resulted in Bolin's becoming "persona non grata" to the
organizational leadership. This chapter will therefore
examine Bolin's philosophy of leadership and its authority
over her abrupt resignation from the NAACP in 1950. In so
doing, it will also examine her membership and leadership
in the New York Branch of the NAACP and analyze the
branch's relationship to the national office.

Examination of Bolin's positioning within the NAACP
leadership is long overdue. Moreover, such an examination
would enrich any analysis of an NAACP leadership model, and
even complicate the tendency to essentialize early Black
leadership. The question that frames this chapter is
however not how this independently vocal female African

American jurist rose to prominence in the NAACP, but more

 

371 Thomas C. Holt, "The Lonely Warrior: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and the
Struggle for Black Leadership," in Black Leaders of the Twentieth
Century, eds. John Hope Franklin and August Meier (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1982), page 50.

 

158

importantly, HOW and WHY she plummeted to the depths of its
disregard.

To be sure, the NAACP counted African American women
among its leadership, though principally as Branch
Directors, Youth Secretaries, and in other non-policy-
effecting positions such as Vice—Presidents. Mary McLeod
Bethune, and Nannie Helen Burroughs were among the few
African American women who served as Vice—Presidents in the
NAACP. The organization's true leadership, as in its
policy-effecting and policy—directing offices, however,
seemed truly reserved for men. Because of gender
inequality women did not have full access to decision-
making in the National Office. Executive custom revealed
just how reticent the National Office had been in
fashioning its decision—making body. A 1943 Memorandum
from the NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White, Assistant
Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins, and Special Counsel
Thurgood Marshall to the Nominating Committee illustrates
the gendered construction of this decision-making body. To
elicit support for its recommendation of Judge Bolin for
membership on the NAACP Board of Directors, the Executive
Officers asked the Nominating Committee, which was manned
by Messrs. Arthur Spingarn, Charles Toney, A. A. Lucas,
James Robinson, Clayborne George, John Hall, and Theodore

Spaulding, to accept Bolin as their nominee for "the woman

159

 

member of the Board of Directors for whom the Committee on
Nominations left a vacancy."372

Bolin's standing in the legal community no doubt
influenced her nomination and subsequent election to the
Board. She brought with her a sense of commitment that was
Clearly manifested in her leadership, in the length of her
volunteer service to the Association, and most importantly
in her egalitarian crusade as a professional. Not
oblivious to this, the Executive Officers stated in their
recommendation that "Judge Jane M. Bolin of New York City,
who both herself and through her family, has had a long
record of hard work for the N.A.A.C.P." and who "is
particularly skilled in the problems of domestic relations,
being the first colored woman to be appointed to the
Domestic Relations Court in New York City" was qualified to
serve as a member of its National Board of Directors.373
Two months before she was elected a Board Member, the Board
of Directors appointed her to the Committee on Delinquency
alongside Arthur Spingarn and Judge Hubert Delany, who

would become an important advocate against the machinery of

 

372 With the names of Amy Spingarn, Mary White Ovington, Lillian
Alexander, and Marion Cuthbert listed among the members of the Board of
Directors from New York City for 1948 and earlier, perhaps the
Executive Office only intended to allow one woman at a time to be
nominated from the New York Branch as a member of the Board of
Directors. Though less restrictive than allowing only one woman from
the New York Branch on the total Board, the provision still limited the
participation of women, and especially African American women, in the
policy-making body of the NAACP. Memorandum to Nominating Committee,
29 December 1943, Board of Director folder, NAACP Papers, Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, D. C.

373 Ibid.

160

 

1'

 

the National Office. Arguably, her nomination to the Board
was prompted by her unusual outspokenness in behalf of the
branches - a practice the nomination was maybe intended to
curtail. Whatever the reason or reasons for Bolin's
nomination, she was eager to become an NAACP National Board
Member.

Jane Bolin's involvement with the NAACP dated back to
her Childhood in Poughkeepsie, New York. Her family's
intimate involvement with the NAACP preceded her personal
commitment to the organization, and no doubt inspired her
active participation. In 1931, she and several members of
her family joined with a representative number of
Poughkeepsie's prominent Black families to found the
Dutchess County Branch of the NAACP.374 The leaders of
Poughkeepsie's elite group formed the nucleus of this
Chapter of the NAACP. The newly established branch named
her brother, Gaius Charles Bolin, Jr. its President, Dr.
Robert Wesley Morgan its Vice-President, Eleanor Vaughn,
its Secretary, and Mrs. Marie Anderson its Treasurer, all
members of Poughkeepsie's long-time prominent Black

families.375

 

374 There were a total of sixty-one people from Poughkeespie, Clinton
Corners, Salt Point, and two nearby communities. NAACP Branch Files,
Poughkeepsie, New York folder, 1932-1934, NAACP Papers, Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.

 

375Ibid., Mamiya and Kaurouma found that a very small elite group of
people, composed mainly of longtime Poughkeepsie residents and the
professional class of doctors, lawyers, dentists, teachers, and
ministers, were perceived as the "leaders" of the Black community both
by themselves and others. Included in this group were the Bolins, the
Morgans, the Lowes, the Paynes, and the Andersons, who were

161

 

f.

Shortly after the founding of the Dutchess County
Branch, Jane Bolin's sister, Ivy Bolin headed the committee
in Charge of the Junior Division of the Dutchess County
Branch of the NAACP which by 1935 appeared to be the only
vibrant organization the NAACP had in Dutchess County for a
while.376 Under the guidance of Ivy Bolin, the Junior
Division had inaugurated the Phyllis Wheatley Scholarship
Fund for promising Black youth wishing to go to college,
and had earned the respect of the National Office which saw
the group as the only hope for resuscitating the regular
branch. The vitality of the Dutchess County Branch had not
grown much since its founding. The Dutchess County area
was decidedly conservative, winning small battles for
integration, but committed to "a quiet and efficient sort
of pressure."377 When the National Office suggested a
meeting with the Branch, shortly after its founding, the
response was lukewarm. The Branch explained to the
National Office that "conditions here in this County are
not perfect, but as it is a small community the newspapers
would take up any such meetings as you desire and any
definite propaganda might create an atmosphere that would

be harder to overcome than if we went to work quietly and

 

 

signatories, and officers of the Dutchess County branch of the NAACP.
Mamiya and Kaurouma, For Their Courage, 18-154.

 

376 By July, 1937, an application for Charter of Poughkeepsie Youth
Council Branch was approved by the National Office of the NAACP. NAACP
Branch Files, Poughkeepsie, New York folder, 1932-1934, NAACP Papers,
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.

377 Gaius Bolin, Jr. to William Pickens, Esq., 20 August 1931, NAACP
Branch Files, Poughkeepsie, New York folder, 1932-1934, NAACP Papers,
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.

 

 

 

162

tried to overcome the smaller things that stand in the way
of our people getting certain kinds of employment in this
County."378

Gaius Bolin, Sr. seemed far less concerned about the
sensibilities of the White residents when, a few months
after the branch was established, he requested information
about the Scottsboro case from the national office in an
effort to acquaint local members with the attempts of the
NAACP to protect the rights of the Scottsboro defendants
and to urge branch participants to subscribe to The

Crisis.379 Gaius Bolin had made The Crisis accessible to

 

his own family for years, and had used The Crisis and open

 

debates at home to expose his children to the works of the
NAACP, and to nurture in them a commitment to the its
ideological and programmatic goals of bringing about a
racially egalitarian society.

Jane Bolin’s early socialization, reading the Crisis

regularly, and knowing that "there were people like Dr.

 

378 Ibid. Mamiya and Kaurouma's oral history project reveals that
indeed the Black leaders in Poughkeepsie, like in neighboring towns,
believed in a "quiet way" of working, negotiating for jobs for Blacks
at local hospitals and at local factories. Social change occurred from
the top down during their leadership, as there was no attempt to
mobilize mass support in the form of protests, demonstrations, and
picketing. Their effectiveness lasted, according to Mamiya and
Kaurouma, from before the 1920's until after World War II when the
largest influx of Black migration to Poughkeepsie began. See Mamiya
and Kaurouma, For Their Courage, 5-6.

 

379 The Scottsboro case which rested on the conviction of nine innocent
black youths nevertheless produced important decisions that reaffirmed
black people's right to basic constitutional protections. Dickerson,
"Gaius Bolin," Williams Alumni Review, 9. See generally, Dan Carter,
Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1969.)

 

163

DuBois on a larger scale and my father on a smaller scale
who were uncompromising and tireless in fighting for the
democratic ideal," certainly shaped her subsequent twenty
years of commitment to the NAACP.380 She became active in
the New York Branch of the NAACP almost immediately upon
settling in New York City.381 She then joined the Branch's
leadership in 1937 when she was elected First Vice-
President and a member of the Executive Committee of the
New York Branch of the NAACP.

In 1945 when Jane Bolin joined the leadership of the
National Office as a member of the Board of Directors of
the NAACP, she was also serving as Second Vice President of
the Harlem Branch. Elected to a three-year term as a
National Board Member, Bolin was suddenly positioned among
the National leadership with whom she had dissented in
behalf of the branches, particularly the New York Branch,
for more than a decade.

Bolin knew firsthand just how important and
indispensable the branches were to the operations of the
NAACP. From fund-raising to membership drives, the
branches, through countless and nameless volunteers,
collectively sustained the organization without benefit of
salary. Yet, Bolin believed that the National Office did
not always respect the branches' commitment to the program

of the NAACP. She had observed, and criticized, for years,

 

380 "Speech in Honor of DuBois," Speeches Folder, Box 3, Bolin Papers.
381 The New York Branch is also referred to as the Harlem Branch.

164

the prevailing attitude that "the branches should raise
money for the national organization and do whatever work
they are asked to do by the national organization but are
arrogantly overstepping their bounds if they make
suggestions or protests to the national office."382

The National Office and the New York Branch of the
NAACP had the same municipal address which presented its
own peculiar dynamics. Moreover, having National Board
Members who also assumed great saliency in the New York
Branch leadership magnified the problems that were inherent
in an organization constructed with clear internal
hierarchies. Certainly, controversy over and
dissatisfaction with the exercise of responsibility are the
inevitable wages of any decision-making institution.383
Sharing a municipal address however Clearly compounded this
controversy within the NAACP. So much so, that the
Chairman of the Committee on Branches once proposed that an
Arbitration Committee be set up to discuss the differences,
labeled by the press an ongoing feud, which continued to

arise between the National Office and the Harlem Branch..384

 

382 Bolin to Arthur Spingarn, 9 March 1950, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

383 Donald E. Lively, Judicial Review and the Consent of the Governed:
Activist Ways and Popular Ends (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland &
Company, Inc., Publishers, 1990), 63.

 

384 Frequent controversy ensued over the division of funds, often
intended for the New York Branch but received by the New York National
Office, and vice versa. Another financial incident involved the New
York's Branch request for permission to withhold funds from the
National Office. The National Board of Directors granted the request
but problems arose when the Branch sought to extend the period of
permission to withhold funds. The particular latitude for retaining
funds granted to the New York Branch by the National Office in
September, 1948 created additional problems. The Constitution and By-

165

 

 

Such problems ranged from the commingling of National and
Branch funds to the unauthorized protest actions of the
Branch. The New York Branch even asked the Board of
Directors in 1949 for the ouster of NAACP Executive
Secretary, Walter White, because of "the bad publicity
centered around him and the crippling effect it had on
their membership and fund—raising campaigns."385 In an
internal National Office memorandum addressed to Roy
Wilkins, Current, the Director of Branches, dismissed the
Branch's charge, stating that the articles referred to did
not have an adverse effect on the New York Branch, since

the overwhelming majority of Harlem voted for Truman.386

 

Laws for Branches under Article V, Section 7 states that all funds
raised by branches are to be shared equally between the National Office
and the branch. In accordance with the request of the New York Branch,
however, the National Board of Directors on September 13, 1948 agreed:
"That the New York City Branch be granted permission to use such
reasonable means as it may devise to defray the operating expenses of
the local branch, the National Office to waive its share of the funds
exclusive of membership receipts in this particular instance, with the
understanding that this permission is granted through December 31, 1948
only, and the Branch must make a financial report of all funds raised
to the Branch, the National Office, and the public." Hubert Delany to
Roy Wilkins, 9 November 1949; Roy Wilkins to Hubert Delany, 17 November
1949, Roy Wilkins to Lindsay White, 20 January 1949, NAACP Branch
Files, New York Folder, NAACP Papers, Library Of Congress, Manuscript
Division, Washington, D.C.

 

385 The particular incident surrounding Walter White stemmed from a
controversy which raged over the political nature of the articles he
wrote in the Herald Tribune during the 1948 presidential campaign,
which were favorable to Truman. At the time, Harlem had gone
Democratic, but the articles were offensive to many Republicans. The
New York Branch, though unique in its proximity to the National Office,
was not the only branch that suffered such experiences. Christopher
Reed notes that in Chicago, almost every year seemed to bring some
political contest, and with each one, the number of volunteers, fund-
raising activities, and memberships decreased. New York Amsterdam
News, November 5, 1949, 3, 39. See Christopher Robert Reed, The
Chicago NAACP and the Rise of Black Professional Leadership, 1910-1966
(Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997), 88.

385 The New York Branch also charged that DuBois's dismissal adversely
affected their membership and fund-raising campaign. DuBois was

 

 

166

Judge Bolin, Judge Hubert Delany, and A. Philip
Randolph numbered among the New York Branch leaders who
also held positions in the National Office. They saw no
contradiction in their concurrent service. But to many
they wore hats of competing authority that intensified
existing tensions between the branch and national office.
The National Office, through its Acting Secretary Roy
Wilkins, regularly questioned the loyalty of its Board
Members who were too vocal on Branch issues, and had even
been accused once of verbally spanking the President of the
New York Branch "as though he were a school boy" because he
(Lindsay White) requested strict protocol in the matter of
an independent petition to renominate Jane Bolin to the
National Board.387

Judge Hubert Delany, a long-time member and Committee
Chair in the New York Branch, was upbraided on several
occasions for his Close involvement with branches, although
he was at the time, the Chairman of the Board's Committee
on Branches. Delany worked particularly close with the New
York Branch to effect a better working relationship between

it and the National Office. But, he detected only deep

 

dismissed between September and December, 1948, and again Mr. Current
reported to Wilkins that there was no adverse effect, but blamed the
Branch's low membership on their own lack of successful campaigning.
Gloster B. Current to Roy Wilkins, 28 October 1949, NAACP Branch Files,
New York City Branch Folder, 1949, NAACP Papers.

387 The matter of the independent petition to renominate Bolin will be
dealt with later in the Chapter, but suffice it to say at this point
that Roy Wilkins was wholly against Bolin's renimination. Hubert
Delany to Roy Wilkins, 9 November 1949, NAACP Branch Files, New York,
New York Folder, NAACP Papers.

 

 

167

resentment on the part of Wilkins for "attempting to
revitalize the effectiveness of the Association and to
bring the branches and the National Office into Closer
harmony."388 In a three-page reprimand Wilkins basically
accused Delany of being "an outright spokesman and
protagonist for the New York Branch" while serving as a
National Board Member.389 Referring to the concerns Delany
raised at a Board meeting, Wilkins said, "At no time and on
no question did you give the impression that you were a
part of the national policy-making and administrative
machinery of the National Association."390

Without apology, Delany, in his four-page response,
informed Wilkins that "The problem the Association faces
now, in my view, is for the staff of the National Office to
recognize that the branches are an integral part of the
Association without which we cannot function effectively,
and that the complaints of the officers and members of the
branches are entitled to careful consideration and not

arbitrary actions."391

 

388 Ibid.

389 Roy Wilkins to Hubert Delany, 18 November 1949, NAACP Branch Files,
New York Folder, NAACP Papers.

390 Wilkins also resented, what he saw as, Delany's inaction when it
came to the derelictions of the New York Branch, and their failure to
cooperate in carrying out the national program, campaigning for
memberships and in raising money on national projects. Roy Wilkins to
Hubert Delany, 1 November 1949, NAACP Branch Files, New York City
Folder, 1949, NAACP Papers.

391 Delany to Wilkins, 9 November 1949, NAACP Branch Files, New York,
New York Folder, NAACP Papers.

 

 

168

While a New York Branch officer, Bolin had offered
similar advice to the National Office about innumerable
complaints being made by branches that their correspondence
is never answered or if it is, it is done in a sarcastic,
insulting manner.392 In one such instance, the National
Office had ignored for over a year the New York Branch's
request for a conference to meet with representatives of
the Board and the staff in order to iron out conflicting
and overlapping problems of the two offices.393

Being elected a Board Member did not suddenly, nor
over time, stifle Bolin's critique of the National Office.
If anything, being a Board Member sharpened her critique.
Many might have expected that she would be co-opted by the
Board to stand against the branches. But, a simple Board
Membership, however significant, could not sway Bolin's
commitment to the democratic principles which defined the
very existence of the NAACP. Never able to turn a blind
eye to the Board's malfeasance, Bolin dissented
continuously while a Board member. "I could not sanction
the paid staff overwhelming the Board to the extent of
usurping the Board's function of making policy," she wrote

to Arthur Spingarn. "Nor could I condone the practice of

 

392 Bolin to Arthur Spingarn, 9 March 1950, NAACP Branch Files, New
York, New York Folder, NAACP Papers.

393 The increasing tension that erupted after Bolin's name was removed
from the ballot most definitely motivated the branch's request for a
conference and the national office's ignoring the request. New York
Amsterdam News, 5 November 1949: 3, 39; Delany to Wilkins, 9 November
1949, NAACP Branch Files, New York, New York Folder, NAACP Papers.

 

169

the Executive Secretary, as revealed by a member of the
Board, calling together in advance of a Board meeting a
secret gathering of a selected few Board members to inform
them what would be on the agenda at the Board meeting and
what action he wanted the Board to take."394 Neither did
she appreciate the "contemptuous and scornful attitude on
the part of the paid staff and a majority of the Board
toward the NAACP Branches and people who work in the
branches."395 She was unequivocal in her conviction that
the NAACP uphold democratic procedures within its own
organizational set-up, because as she saw it, "An
authoritative set-up, whether Fascist, Communist, or NAACP
is abhorrent."396

It had become Clear to Bolin and others, like Delany,
that the "Hague attitude of 'I am the Law'" which Wilkins
and some Board members exhibited had begun to adversely
affect membership, and thus the buoyancy of the
organization, as the branches were not going to stand for
such treatment for much longer. One of the complaints not
only of Board members but of the branches was that the
officers of the Association felt that they controlled the
Association, and were within their rights to liquidate
those who were in disagreement with the Board. As a Board

member Delany believed that if the Board's relationship

 

394 Bolin to Spingarn, 9 March 1950, Box 3, Bolin Papers.
395 Ibid.
395 Ibid.

170

with the branches were more cordial and respectful, "our
membership would not be dropping at such [an] alarmingly
rapid rate."397 What Bolin and Delany witnessed was the
damaging effect that such an attitude had on branch
operations. They both rejected the Association's published
membership of 500,000, identifying 150,000 as a more
accurate number of the Association's membership in 1949.398
Wilkins refused to attribute the decrease in
memberships to any "high and mighty" attitude of the
National Office. Instead he pointed to the inordinate
latitude permitted in the operations of local branches in
many areas such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston,
Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Washington, and Philadelphia.
He insisted in a letter to Delany that many factors had
entered into the decline in memberships, not the least of
which was maladministration in Chicago, high salaries and
an ineffective local program in Detroit, a strike against a
15—year branch president in Los Angeles, and what he saw as
failed membership drives in the New York Branch whose
"concentration on a raffle which raised $10,000 for the

Harlem Branch treasury...did not secure any members."399 In

 

397 Delany to Wilkins, 9 November 1949, NAACP Branch Files, New York,
New York Folder, NAACP Papers.

398 Ibid.; Bolin to Spingarn, 9 March 1950, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

399 He also attributed the decrease to other factors affecting certain
localities, such as a shipping strike in San Francisco, the coal strike'
that affected the coal-producing states, the steel strike in Cleveland,
and shutdowns and talks of strikes in Detroit. Wilkins to Delany, 18
November 1949, NAACP Branch Files, New York, New York Folder, NAACP
Papers.

171

 

 

his effort to dispel any suggestion that the attitude of
the National Office contributed to the decrease in
Association membership, Wilkins had conceded that indeed
there was a grave decrease in membership. Although in 1950

he told William Gibson, Editor of the Afro-American: "I

 

should like to point out that if the NAACP national office
had a consistent policy of 'Contemptuous and arrogant'
treatment of branches of the Association, we would-~by this
time—~have no branches, no support, no members, no
money....Instead, we have more than 1,200 functioning
units, 28 state organizations as going concerns, and are in
the process of holding five regional conferences."400
Bolin's analysis of the decrease in membership was
more programmatically informed. She truly believed that
the NAACP program had become "sterile and barren," and
considered this to be a major reason for its membership
dropping from nearly half a million to about one-eight of a
million. "The only part of the NAACP which is not
programmatically bankrupt today," she said in a letter to
Arthur Spingarn, "is its legal department which is doing an
important and superb job. This, however is limited in
scope and the NAACP in my opinion can no longer justify its
failures in larger areas by the success of its legal arm in

its limited area."401

 

40° Wilkins to Gibson, 17 March 1950, NAACP Branch Files, New York
Folder, NAACP Papers.

401 Bolin to Spingarn, 9 March 1950, Box 3, Bolin Papers. The NAACP
Legal Defense Fund, by the late 19405, had indeed done a superb job in

172

 

Like Hubert Delany, she was completely opposed to the
kind of elitist leadership which assumed that "all the
brains in the NAACP lie only in the national Board and
staff."402 In an open letter to the President of the NAACP,
Arthur Spingarn, she reminded him that as "a member of
nearly twenty years standing in the Poughkeepsie and New
York Branches I have seen too many earnest people working
on a volunteer basis with sincere devotion to the program 1
of the NAACP to subscribe to these attitudes of the
national organization."403 She believed strongly that the
positions and requests of the branches should be
thoughtfully and respectfully considered, if for no other
reason than the fact of their service to the organization.

If the National Office was the sum of its separate
parts, then it remained a very divided whole for the
duration of Bolin's tenure. While thoroughly committed to
the NAACP ideologically, in administrative matters Bolin
constantly challenged the "principle of centrality" that

left the branches in a perpetually subordinate position to

 

the National Office.404 Bolin believed in "participatory

 

fighting for, and making great strides for, Civil Rights in education
(Gaines, Sipuel, Sweatt), housing (Shelley v. Kraemer), and voting
(Smith v. Allwright) through the courts. See Darlene Clark Hine, hTeeh
Victory: The Rise and Fall of the White Primary in Texas (Millwood, NY:
KTO Press, 1979), and Steven Lawson, Black Ballots: Voting Rights in
the South, 1944-1969 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.)
Still, Bolin and others felt that the real fight for economic equality
had not yet begun.

 

 

402 Bolin to Spingarn, 9 March 1950, Box 3, Bolin Papers.
403 Ibid.

404 Christopher Robert Reed, The Chicago NAACP and the Rise of Black
Professional Leadership, 1910-1966 (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana
University Press, 1997), 68.

173

democracy," a philosophy of leadership which Carol Mueller
attributes to Miss Ella Baker, a former Field Secretary and
Director of Branches with the NAACP.405

As a Board Member, Bolin was a policy-maker, and
better-positioned as an equal to dissent and protest in
behalf of the branches. Positioned as "an outsider
within," insofar as her philosophy of leadership was
concerned, she defended the rights of NAACP branches,
especially the Harlem Branch.406 Positioned as an equal,
her dissent was a source of profound irritation and
embarrassment for the National Office. The National Office
was therefore committed to ending her tenure as board
member even if it meant compromising democratic principles.

What followed Bolin's second term as a member of the
National Board of Directors, despite efforts to secure her
renomination, was the uncharacteristic removal of an
incumbent Board Member with the highest attendance record
of any Board member re-nominated. Bolin was actually still
serving her second term when the decision was made not to
keep her on the Board. Her tenure on the Board begun in
1943 when the Executive Officers of the NAACP recommended
her to the Nominating Committee for nomination in February

1944. She was then duly elected at the NAACP Annual

 

405 Joanne Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, Inc., 1998), especially Chapters 3, 4, and 5.

405 In this capacity she was better-situated to garner the support of
fellow Board members such as Judge Hubert Delany. As will be discussed
later, her philosophical conviction endeared many within the national
office to the fight.

 

174

Meeting on January 2, 1945, and assumed office for a three-

year term to end December 31, 1947.407 In initially

 

removing Bolin's name from the ballot for renomination to
the Board of Directors, the Nominating Committee had not
anticipated just how belligerent her supporters would be.
More importantly, the Nominating Committee could not have
predicted that the decision to remove Judge Bolin's name
from the ballot would have met a challenge of public
proportion. If anything, the Nominating Committee probably
imagined some minor opposition from within the Board, which 1
they hoped to quell with Bolin's subsequent appointment as
an NAACP vice-president. They could not have been more
wrong on all counts.

The headline in the Afro-American on October 8, 1949

 

read "REMOVAL OF JUDGE BOLIN FROM NAACP BOARD BARED." An

unidentified source revealed to the Afro-American that the

 

NAACP seven-man Nominating Committee had moved to drop
Judge Jane Bolin as a member of the Board of Directors.408

In actuality, the Committee by a 4 to 3 vote, agreed not to

 

407 Delany to Wilkins, 9 November 1949, NAACP Branch Files, New York,
New York Folder, NAACP Papers.

408 Bolin's second term as Board member would expire in December of
that year. The members of the Nominating Committee were Dr. J. L.
Leach (Flint, Michigan), Mrs. Rosa B. Johnson (Marshalltown, Iowa), W.
K. Saxon, (Asheville, North Carolina), Joshua Thompson (Amber,
Pennsylvania) elected by the Conference; Judge Hubert T. Delany (New
York City), Mrs. D. E. Lampkin (Pittsburgh), Alfred Baker Lewis
(Greenwich, Connecticut) elected by the Board. Dr. Leach and Daisy
Lampkin to Branch Officer, 14 November 1949, NAACP Branch Files, New
York Folder, NAACP Papers; Thurgood Marshall to Bernard Young,
Publisher of Journal and Guide, 18 October 1949, NAACP Board of
Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers; The Afro-American, 8
October 1949, pages 1 and 2, Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

 

175

recommend Judge Bolin for another term on the Board. The
failure to renominate Judge Bolin was actually by a tie
vote, untied only by a vote of Dr. Leach, the Chairman of
the Committee.409 But even the validity of this vote was in
question. What was supposed to be strictly internal
Association business, not yet authorized for release, had
suddenly become available for public consumption and
criticism. To make matters worse, neither the standing
Board collectively, nor Judge Bolin individually, had been
notified of the Committee's action. As a result, Judge
Bolin found out about her ouster through the morning paper
and not by internal memorandum.

According to the source, Judge Bolin had been dropped
as a member of the Board of Directors after a staff meeting
was called at the national office when it was stated that
"Bolin has to go."410 It was further reported that two top
staff members at that meeting opposed Judge Bolin's
continuance as a Board member on the ground that "we can't
get along with her."411 The reference to there being a
staff meeting, and not necessarily a Nominating Committee

meeting, suggested that members of the paid staff, as in

 

409 Bolin and Delany to Wilkins, 22 November 1949, NAACP Board of
Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

410 It is appropriate at this time to differentiate between the
"staff," so often referenced by Bolin, and the "Board." Reference to
the "staff" is synonymous with reference to the "paid staff" as in the
chief administrative officers such as the Executive Secretary and
Assistant/Acting Executive Secretary, unlike the volunteer members of
the Board of Directors. Reference to the "National Office" includes
members of both staff and Board. The Afro-American, 8 October 1949, 1.

411 Ibid.

 

176

the Executive or Acting Secretary, might have discussed
their position on Judge Bolin's renomination with select
members of the Committee, in an effort to influence the
Committee's decision. Judge Delany, staunch Bolin
supporter and member of the Nominating Committee, was not
privy to the meeting in question. Tantamount to abdication
by the Board to the staff, such a meeting would not have
been uncommon, but characteristic of the lack of propriety
Bolin so often Challenged throughout her tenure with the
NAACP.412

Bolin welcomed cooperation between the Board and the
Staff. She only objected to situations like the one

reported in the Afro-American, and similar incidents, of

 

the Executive Secretary calling secret meetings in advance
of Board meetings to inform Board members of what action he
wanted them to take.413 Like Judge Delany, her partner in
protest, Judge Bolin respected the Board of Directors as
the Association's policy-making body, and therefore,

expected the staff to carry out policy, without attempting

 

412 According to the "Amendments to National Constitution," Article II,
Section 3, as amended by the National Board of Directors at its meeting
on September 13, 1948, "the said Association shall have a Nominating
Committee consisting of seven (7) members of the Association; four (4)
to be elected by the delegates to the annual convention; three (3) to
be elected annually by the Board of Directors from its own members."
"Amendments to National Constitution," NAACP Branch Files, New York
City Folder, New York, NAACP Papers.

413 During the period of this dissension, Walter White was Executive
Secretary and Roy Wilkins was Assistant, and for some time, Acting
Secretary. Bolin to Spingarn, 9 March 1950, Box 3, Bolin Papers;
Delany to Wilkins, 9 November 1949, NAACP Branch Files, New York
Folder, NAACP Papers; The Afro-American, 8 October 1949.

 

 

177

to undermine, or in anyway interfere with, the
responsibilities of the Board.414

As soon as the story broke rumors and whispers about
the clandestine operations of the Nominating Committee
circulated freely. As a result, the National Office found
itself under the microscope. The Board of Directors called
a meeting on October 10, when Judge Bolin asked to speak on
a point of personal privilege. She began by telling the
Board that she was not addressing her remarks to the action
of the Committee on Nominations in failing to renominate
her to the Board. She had accepted their failure to re-
nominate her, or so it seemed. Her remarks were, instead,

"to the article on page 1 of this week's Afro-American,

 

which I am sure all of you have seen."415 She reminded the
Board that she was obviously not present when the
Nominating Committee made its recommendation, yet "To date
I have not been officially notified of the failure of the
Committee on Nominations to redesignate me - although the
press was notified at once."416 Bolin made full use of the
platform she had; without wavering, she announced that the
information must have been given to the press by some
member of the staff who was present at both the staff

meeting on Wednesday and the meeting of the Committee on

 

414 Bolin to Spingarn, 9 March 1949, Delany to Wilkins, 9 November
1949, NAACP Branch Files, New York Folder, NAACP Papers.

415 Minutes of Board of Directors Meeting, 10 October 1949, NAACP
Branch Files, New York Folder, NAACP Papers.

415 Ibid.

178

Nominations on Thursday. This type of behavior was not
uncommon, and maybe that made it more revolting to her. As
she recalled, not quite a month ago, a press release was
circulated days in advance of a Board meeting stating that
the Board had selected Roy Wilkins as Acting Executive
Secretary. Although she was not asking for action to be
taken against the party or parties responsible for such a
leak, she felt obliged to share with the Board that "one of
the most outstanding members of our race and a founder of
the NAACP, Dr. DuBois, was summarily dismissed by this
Board for letting something get to the press before it had
gone through the proper channels."417

She was not so much concerned about the lack of
respect shown her as she was about the interference of the
staff in the business of the Nominating Committee. It was

ironic that the very practice she challenged throughout her

 

417 She was probably referring to the 1934 incident surrounding
DuBois's editorial which appeared in the Crisis without the prior
approval of the Crisis Committee. The editorial criticized the
Association's policy and philosophy concerning the role it had played
and the position it would take in the future regarding segregation. In
this editorial DuBois denounced the Association's historic stand on
segregation by contending that "The Association is an organization that
never had taken and never could take an absolute stand against race
segregation." When the Board voted that no salaried officer could
criticize the policy, work, or officers in The Crisis, it was more than
DuBois was willing to concede, so he submitted, and the Board accepted,
his resignation in 1934. However, she might have been referring to the
much older DuBois, in 1948, who was summarily dismissed from the
Association for basic policy differences. His dismissal came months
after the presentation of "An Appeal to the World" petition on the
denial of human rights to minorities and an appeal to the United
Nations for redress. See, Minnie Finch, The NAACP: Its Fight For
Justice (Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1981), 102,
119-120; Charles Kellogg, NAACP: A Historyeof the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored Peeple (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1967); B. Joyce Ross, J. E. Spingarn and the Rise of
the N.A.A.C.P. (New York: Antheneum, 1972.)

 

 

 

 

 

179

tenure with the NAACP should be the reason for her demise
organizationally. "Since I have been on this Board," she
said, "I have been called on by people who are nationally
known in the field of social action to justify the
domination of the organization by the staff." She could
not justify it, and she was not about to apologize for it
because as far as she was concerned it was a complete
reversal of the traditional functions of a policy-making
Board and a policy-executing staff; in her estimation a
Clear situation of "the tail wagging the dog rather than

the dog wagging the tail."418
"We do have a reputation," she informed the Board,

"for being a supine board of puppets which does everything
expected of us by the executive secretary and his staff."419
She had a captive audience, one that she would no longer
have at the close of her term as Member of the Board. More
importantly, she stood before a Board made vulnerable
because of its own deeds. It could not, in good faith,
dismiss her remarks because, quite simply, the verdict was
in and the evidence was out in the press. No sooner had
this October 8 Board meeting adjourned than there appeared

in the Amsterdam News an account of matters discussed at

 

 

418 The Afro-American, October 8, 1949, Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin
Papers.

 

419 Ibid. Walter White was actually very instrumental in bringing
Bolin into the fold of the National Office, yet from the beginning she
exhibited only contempt for him as Executive Secretary.

180

the meeting. This prompted the Acting Secretary to state
openly at the November Board meeting: "someone is giving
out information that is detrimental to the
Association,...the Board should realize that it is creating
publicity which is hurting the Association, and which is
making it very difficult to carry on a program."420 It was
the opportune time for Bolin to set the entire Board
straight, one last time, on her integrity as a Board
member, and to distinguish her service from theirs. Thus,
in closing, she said:

I must say I feel we are not meeting the
obligation we have to the masses of the people.
Yet I have not gone out and tried to operate
behind the scenes. I have said what I had to say
right in this room. I have not tried to engage
any member of the board or staff in any politics.
I have not gone to the press with my differences
of opinion. In fact, at least two members of the
Board can affirm that when they wanted to go to
the press with their differences of opinion, I
discouraged it when my advice was sought. I have
been very outspoken in what I have to say. I
have been so not because of any personal
hostility towards any member of the staff or
board. I was trying to express myself the only
way I know how in the interest of the masses of
theepeople who are clamoring for the attention of
this association, but are not receiving it.

(emphasis mine)421

 

 

 

 

420 Minutes of Meeting of the Board of Directors, 14 November 1949,
NAACP Board of Director Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers. It is
interesting that Wilkins was now willing to consider the effects of bad
Board publicity on the operations of the Association, branch and
national office, when not too long ago he dismissed similar concerns
raised by the New York Branch.

421 Board of Directors Meeting, 10 October 1949, NAACP Board of
Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

181

Now, since the Nominating Committee failed to
reconsider Bolin for re-election to the Board, the only way
for her to get on the ballot for re—election (should she
desire re-election to the Board) was pursuant to Article
II, Section 3 of the Constitution and By-Laws of the NAACP,
which required a petition containing the names of at least
30 members who wanted to retain her on the Board. The
nominees would then be elected by ballot of the
Association's branches in December.422 Her supporters
wasted no time in securing the signatures of as many
Association members as possible. It is difficult to tell
whether Bolin was truly determined to retain her seat on
the Board, or whether she simply acquiesced to the
enthusiasm of her constituency. Either way she was on the
road to becoming "persona non grata" to the National
Office.

By October 28, the New York Branch had submitted, to
the National Office, a Nominating Petition with close to
one hundred signatures, including those of Nominating
Committee Member, Hubert Delany; New York Branch President,
Lindsay White; National Assistant Treasurer, Dr. Channing
Tobias; and Miss Ella Baker, a dedicated member of the New
York Branch, who from all accounts shared Bolin's
philosophy of "participatory democracy." Though Closer

examination revealed duplicate signatures, the petition

 

422 NAACP Board of Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers;
The Afro-American, October 8, 1949, Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

182

represented well in excess of the thirty members required.
The petition, whose preamble read "We, the undersigned
members in good standing of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People, hereby nominate as a
member of its Board of Directors JUDGE JANE M. BOLIN," also
included a paragraph detailing the accomplishments of the
nominee, a courtesy that was not extended to all other
nominees.423

The National Office was trying its best not to further
arouse the ire of the New York Branch. Moreover, it wanted
to avoid any further appearance of impropriety as far as
the election was concerned. Although, following the
Branch's submission, Roy Wilkins supposedly sang the
praises of a favored nominee publicly from his desk in the
National Office. His public support of one nominee over
others was in any event a conflict of interest that was not
lost on Hubert Delany. "I also consider that it was
improper in a recent release going out from the National
Office about two weeks ago [early November] to pick out one
nominee from along all the rest, and tell of his great work
for the Association," he told Wilkins, because "If that is
democracy, then I think we need a new definition of
democracy for the Association." The Nominating Petition
submitted by the Jamaica Branch of the NAACP did not

include a paragraph like the one in the New York Branch's

 

423 NAACP Branch Files, New York Branch Folder, NAACP Papers; see
Exhibit B in Appendix.

183

petition, but it did have more than the thirty signatures
required.424

The New York Branch was equally vigilant in holding
the National Office to strict administrative propriety. It
attached, to the petition, forms to be signed by the Acting
Secretary upon his receipt of said petitions. Though
Wilkins obliged, he could not contain his outrage at such a
request. In a letter to Lindsay White, Branch President,
he said that never in his years with the NAACP had a branch
ever felt it either desirable or necessary to secure a
signed receipt for a petition of nomination. "The
implications contained in this request from you are not
pleasant," he told White, "nor do they reflect favorably
upon you or the New York Branch or any other agents for
whom you may have been acting."425 With obvious reference
to Bolin, he went on to say, "The National Office has never
been accused of 'losing' a petition, or suppressing one, or
in any fashion interfering with the constitutional right of
30 or more persons to make independent nominations. To
have you or the New York Branch or any other persons
involved in this transaction so crudely imply that
dishonesty and mishandling could be expected is indicative,
I venture to state, of the origin of the alleged

difficulties between the New York Branch and the National

 

424 Nominating Petition, NAACP Branch Files, New York Branch Folder,
NAACP Papers.

425 Wilkins to Lindsay White, 1 November 1949, NAACP Branch Files, New
York Branch Folder, NAACP Papers.

184

Office."426 White simply chalked up such invective to
Wilkins being "hypersensitive." Though sincerely concerned
about the implications of dishonesty imputed to his office,
Wilkins was even more concerned that his signature,
acknowledging the receipt of the petitions, could be
construed as something more. But, as Lindsay White told
him, "To think that your signature meant anything else is
difficult to reconcile with reason."427

Some members of the Nominating Committee were not
willing to defer totally to the election process. In an
effort to seal the outcome of the election, the National
Office, through the agency of Dr. Leach, Chairman of the
Nominating Committee, and Daisy Lampkin, Secretary of the
Committee, sent out a craftily worded letter to all
branches. The letter asked the branches to vote for the
nominees of the Nominating Committee, and to ignore the
petition of the New York Branch which it said was trying to
undermine the Committee. It further stated, “Your
Committee was not aware of any New York feud that may or

may not have been going on. Our business, as the elected

 

426 Ibid. It should not have been so difficult for Wilkins to conceive
of the National Office mishandling information. Their mishandling of
information had injected private Association business into the press,
and not a month earlier, Bolin had, by letter, demanded a correction of
the Minutes to indicate her presence at the Board's November meeting.
Bolin to Louis Wright, 6 December 1949, NAACP Board of Directors Files,
Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

427 Lindsay White to Wilkins, 3 November 1949, NAACP Branch Files, New
York Branch Folder, NAACP Papers.

185

representatives of the convention and of the Board, was to
try to select good nominations to the Board.”428
This letter, which was sent out in an official
capacity did not necessarily represent the opinions of the
seven members of the Nominating Committee, nor the National
Office as a whole. Yet, the impression was that it did.
As a result, it embroiled the National Office further in
this cauldron of controversy. After all, if the National
Office supported this letter, then implicitly, it also
condoned interference with the election process. As will
be seen from the New York Branch's response, there were at
least five national officers who were willing to publicly
accuse the National Office of doing just that.429 The

letter further polarized the Nominating Committee, which

was already sharply divided on the issue of Judge Bolin's

 

428 The Committee recommended the following for election to new
memberships on the Board: Kelly M. Alexander, Charlotte, North
Carolina; Dr. W. Montague Cobb, Washington, D.C.; Wesley W. Law,
Savannah, Georgia; Dr. Harry J. Greene, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;
Carl R. Johnson, Kansas City, Missouri. The list of incumbent Board
members recommended for re-election were: Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers,
Boston, Massachusetts; Dr. Nathan K. Christopher, Cleveland, Ohio; Earl
B. Dickerson, Chicago, Illinois; Dr. George D. Flemmings, Fort Worth,
Texas; Dr. Allen F. Jackson, Baltimore, Maryland; Dr. 0. Clay Maxwell,
New York, New York; Philip Murray, Washington, D. C.; Theodore
Spaulding, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Honorable Charles E. Toney,
New York, New York; Dr. Louis T. Wright, New York, New York. Dr. Leach
and Daisy Lampkin to Branch Officers, 28 October 1949 and 14 November
1949, NAACP Branch Files, New York Branch Folder, NAACP Papers.

429 These officers were the Reverend William Lloyd Imes, Vice-
President, National Board of Directors; the Honorable Hubert Delany,
Member, Nominating Committee, National Board of Directors, Chairman,
National Board Committee on Branches; Earl B. Dickerson, Member,
National Board of Directors; James E. Allen, President, New York State
Conference of NAACP Branches; Lindsay H. White, President, New York
Branch of NAACP. NAACP Branch Files, New York Branch Folder, NAACP
Papers.

186

re-election to the Board. It also elicited a similarly
crafted, and much more direct, letter from the New York
Branch.

The New York Branch's letter was similarly addressed
to Branch Presidents, who were asked to "bring this matter
to the attention of your Executive Committee and read this
letter to the membership at the annual meeting just before
the ballots are distributed and before the votes are cast
for the members of the National Board of Directors."430 The
architects of this letter were Judge Hubert Delany, James
E. Allen, William Lloyd Imes, Earl B. Dickerson, and
Lindsay H. White, all of whom were currently affiliated
with the National Office, with the exception of Lindsay
White who was President of the New York Branch. They
framed the content of their protest with the following
opening sentence: "This letter trumpets the call to action
of every Branch as we face a great democratic crisis in the
N.A.A.C.P. today."431 In their estimation, members of the
Nominating Committee had gone to great lengths to deny the
NAACP an outstanding leader in Judge Bolin. Therefore,
acting with due authority, and with endorsements from

prominent national officers, the New York Branch assumed

 

430 Delany, Imes, Dickerson, Allen, and White to Branch Presidents, 16
November 1949, NAACP Board of Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP
Papers. Hereinafter referenced as New York Branch to Branch
Presidents.

431 New York Branch to Branch Presidents, 16 November 1949, NAACP
Branch Files, New York Branch Folder, NAACP Papers. At first glance
the sentence conjures up images of the anti-democratic. As authorized
as this correspondence was, it intended, as did Dr. Leach's letter, to
influence the outcome of the election for Board members.

187

the responsibility for exposing the politics surrounding
the Nominating Committee's failure to renominate Judge
Bolin to the Board of Directors. The Branch had
surreptitiously secured a National Office list of the
officers of all NAACP branches across the country, and
proceeded to counteract whatever impact Dr. Leach and Daisy
Lampkin had made. The New York Branch wanted all other
branches to know that the letter from Dr. Leach and Mrs.
Lampkin was unauthorized, and that the fact that an
unauthorized letter was sent on the official stationery of
the NAACP only substantiated what they had suspected all
along, "that Judge Jane M. Bolin after serving twelve years
on the Executive Committee of the New York Branch and five
years on the National Board was not renominated because of
the opposition of some of the top national office paid
staff."432 They then explained that "Even if the letter
purporting to come from the Nominating Committee was
authorized — and it was not - it would in effect be
attempting to prevent the election of any candidates
nominated by the Branch by independent petition as provided
for in the N.A.A.C.P. Constitution."433

The New York Branch saw the Nominating Committee's
vote against Bolin as a direct result of the political
engineering of top paid staff in the National Office. And,

before ballots would be cast, they wanted all Association

 

432 Ibid.
433 Ibid.

188

 

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members to know that the opposition to Bolin "was based on
Judge Bolin's fighting in the National Board for greater

democratic participation by the Branches in the policies

 

and work of the N.A.A.C.P."434 They underscored the fact
that "Judge Bolin has always insisted that the people in
the branches be regarded as more than just fund raisers for
the national staff but rather as interested citizens
working toward the professed goals of the N.A.A.C.P."435

It was up to the Association membership, "the
principal stockholders" of the organization, to determine
who would represent them on the Board of Directors. Yet,
as late as early-December, though all branches had received
letters from the New York Branch, and Leach and Lampkin,
several branches had not received an official ballot from
the National Office. In a letter to the National Office,
dated November 25, the President of the Willismsport
Branch, Reverend Madison Bowe informed the National Youth
Secretary, Ruby Hurley, that while he had not received the
list of candidates, "we have had two letters one from the
New York Branch and one from the Nominating Committee, I
believe from your office, recommending certain persons for
the Executive Board for the next term and to me they are

conflicting."436

 

434 New York Branch to Branch Presidents, 16 November 1949, NAACP
Branch Files, New York Branch Folder, NAACP Papers.

435 Ibid.

436 The letter was addressed to Hurley simply because months prior
Hurley had visited the Williamsport and Lewisburg branches on Youth

189

This "New York" feud between the Branch and the
National Office had touched, and even disturbed the
confidence of, the Association's membership. Which letter
were branches supposed to believe? Could they accept the
veracity of the New York Branch, and still remain loyal to
the Association? Could they obtain unbiased Clarification
on issues which both letters raised? Would questioning the
National Office automatically make their branch suspect in
the eyes of the National Office? Was there sufficient time
to investigate all relevant issues before the December 3lst
deadline for ballot submission? These were only a few of
the questions that confronted the branches. And, if they
hoped to have a truly informed ballot, those, and many more
questions would have to be answered.

With an impending deadline, many branches probably
just chalked the "conflicting" letters up to a New York
City problem, involving a New York Branch nominee, and
bowed out of further inquiry. But at least one branch
Chose an informed ballot over a merely on-time ballot. A
very telling letter was sent to the National Office from
Sgd. Everett R. Lawrence, the President of the Merrimack
Vallley Branch in Andover, Massachusetts on November 215t.
Though the Merrimack Valley Branch had received the
official ballot from the National Office, and had started

to vote on such official ballot, the Branch had made the

 

Division business. Rev. Madison A. Bowe to Ruby Hurley, 25 November
1949, NAACP Board of Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

190

decision to table the voting until its December meeting, or
until such time as all issues raised in both letters were
addressed. Lawrence said, "As it stands now, no one knows
whether to believe that the Committee actually ng act in
the best interests of the Association, - ng consider each
nominee fairly. Whom do we believe? Do you feel that this
is the sort of action that builds confidence in our
National Staff? Do you realize that this questionable
business offers just the argument needed for those who are
reluctant to join? --that it is just this sort of childish
bickering that has many of your supporting branches on
their heels?"437

Wilkins attempted, but could not assuage the concerns
of the Merrimack Valley Branch with perfunctory statements
about the recalcitrance of a "problem Child" branch because
Lawrence Clearly stated: "I expect an explanatory reply to
present to my Branch at our December meeting, and I will
not consider a form letter as a satisfactory means of
supplying the answers to my direct questions."438 Wilkins
promised to pass on Lawrence's letter directly to the
Chairman of the Nominating Committee, whom he supposed was
better situated, than he, to answer the inquiries of the
Branch without it being "branded immediately as an

unwarranted attempt, on the part of an employed staff

 

437 Sgd. Everett Lawrence to Chairman of the Nominating Committee, 21
November 1949, NAACP Branch Files, New York Branch Folder, NAACP
Papers.

438 Ibid.

191

member who is already accused of bias, to influence a
situation."439 But, interestingly, as Chairman of the
Nominating Committee, Leach might not have been the most
objective person at that particular time to answer the
concerns of the branches. He was, after all, a party to
the controversy that had ensued. As it turned out, Judge
Delany’s earlier proposal of an Arbitration Committee may
have been the fairest, though not the most efficient, way
to handle the root of the problem that had surely tainted
an election.

Judge Delany, who served on the Nominating Committee
with J. L. Leach, Daisy Lampkin, Joshua Thompson, Rosa
Johnson, W. K. Saxon, and Alfred Baker Lewis, sought to
distance himself from the Committee's decision to remove
Bolin. He had announced baldly in the Nomination
Committee's "infamous" meeting that he would "help Judge
Bolin fight" for re—election.440 Delany was clearly one of
the Committee members who voted to retain Judge Bolin as a
member of the Board. He had even lent his name to the New
York Branch's letter of response, along with James E.
Allen, William Lloyd Imes, Earl B. Dickerson, and Lindsay

H. White. Later, he questioned whether the proceedings

 

439 Wilkins to Sgd. Everett Lawrence, 23 November 1949, NAACP Branch
Files, New York Branch Folder, NAACP Papers.

440 Wilkins to Reverend Bowe, 30 November 1949, NAACP Board of
Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers. Delany's statement
has no bearing on whether or not Judge Bolin wanted to "fight" for re-
election. After all, Delany's statement was made moments after the
Committee voted to remove her.

192

that resulted in the Committee's 4 to 3 vote against
Bolin's renomination were not null and void. As he
recalled, at no time before or during the Committee's
deliberations was there a Committee Secretary, a title he
says Mrs. Lampkin later assumed for the single purpose of
lending legitimacy to the letter she and Dr. Leach wrote.
In addition, he noted that the Committee Chair was
unilaterally selected by Roy Wilkins who was present during

the Committee's deliberations.441
In a letter to Wilkins, threatening to expose his

interference, he said, "I think it will be you who will
need to do some explaining as to why a duly authorized
committee of the Board and the convention proceeds to
conduct its business pursuant to your selection of the
Chairman, and after the business is completed proceeds then
to select a Secretary."442 To support his Charge, Delany
recounted the following to Wilkins:

At 10 o'clock there were three persons seated on

each side of the table where the Committee sat,

which table was adjoining your desk. At about 5

minutes passed 10, as Dr. Leach came in, you

arose and said substantially, 'Dr. Leach, we have

a seat ready for you. You may act as Chairman.‘

And Dr. Leach proceeded to act as Chairman,
pursuant to your designation.443

 

441 Delany to Wilkins, 30 November 1949, NAACP Branch Files, New York
Branch Folder, NAACP Papers.

442 Ibid.
443 Ibid. Of course Wilkins's explanation stated that after Delany
left the meeting early, the Committee continued its deliberations and

unanimously agreed, in the light of Delany's statement to "personally
fight" its action regarding Judge Bolin, to designate Mrs. Lampkin as

193

Such an indictment might have had more currency had Delany
not participated in the proceedings he later discredited.
Yet, he hoped that by putting the information before the
branches, that somehow the masses of Association members
would storm the "Bastille" that was the National Office,
demanding answers or heads. Instead, either because of too
much information, not enough information, not the right
information, or simply because of confusion with all of the
information, the members voted for the Committee's
nominees. As a result, at the January 3, 1950 annual
Association meeting, Judge Bolin was not re—elected to the
National Board of Directors.444

However at the meeting of the Board of Directors
following the annual Association meeting on January 3,
1950, Judge Bolin was elected as one of the vice-presidents
of the NAACP for the regular one—year term ending December
31, 1950. In his letter of congratulations, Wilkins told
her: "Because of your interest and activity in the past, we
are confident that in the capacity of a vice-president you
will continue to give us your advice and support in the
many matters that will come before the Association."445

Without delay Bolin wrote Wilkins the following day

 

Secretary and to authorize the chairman and the secretary to issue
"such communications in the name of the committee as was deemed
necessary by developing events. See, Wilkins to Delany, November 29,
1949, NAACP Board of Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

444 The balloting of the branches on members of the Board of Directors
was done at the 3 January 1950 annual Association meeting.

445 Wilkins to Bolin, January 10, 1950, NAACP Board of Directors Files,
Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

194

 

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inquiring about the duties of vice-presidents. Referring
to Article IV, Section 2 of the NAACP Constitution which
stated, "The Vice Presidents shall perform such functions
and exercise such duties as may be voted by the Board of
Directors," Bolin requested that Wilkins send her within
the next week a copy of the minutes of the meeting at which
the Board had determined the functions and duties of Vice-
Presidents of the Association.446 This simple request
sparked a new flame of contention, not wholly unrelated to
the issue of Bolin's removal as Board member. Many in the
National Office saw her inquiry as an affront to the
Board's graciousness in electing her as a Vice-President.
Not coincidentally, the New York Branch had specified in
its letter to all Branch Presidents: "Do not be fooled by
the offer of the Nominating Committee to make Judge Bolin a
Vice-President of the N.A.A.C.P. This is part of their
plan to continue to use Judge Bolin's name and prestige for
the benefit of the N.A.A.C.P. while depriving her of
participating in making Board policy."447 Maybe it was
hoped that Bolin would have accepted her "consolation
prize" in a vice-presidency and quietly retired on the

letterhead of the Association hierarchy. And, had she been

 

446 It is entirely possible that Bolin knew that no such record
existed, but made the request as a formality - a attempt to create a
record for herself. Bolin to Wilkins, 11 January 1950, NAACP Board of
Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

447 Imes, Delany, Dickerson, Allen, and White to NAACP Branch
Presidents, 16 November 1949, NAACP Branch Files, New York Branch
Folder, NAACP Papers.

195

 

 

 

a person easily swayed and silenced by titles, she might
have. But, she was not. She had always been a person who
operated with the full force of her office behind her.
She, therefore, needed to know exactly what the force, and
not merely the title, of that office was. Bolin was also
too aware of the internal politics of the Association's
National Office, having recently experienced its effects,
to simply accept a title without understanding the import
of its office. What followed therefore was a full—blown
intra-organizational conflict that exploded onto the pages
of the Black Press from New York to Kansas City, Missouri.
Within a week of Bolin's request for the minutes,
Wilkins had his secretary call Bolin, not because he had
the information she requested, but simply "because she
asked for a reply in a week."448 It was this kind of
paranoia that gripped the National Office. A few days
later, Wilkins himself wrote to Bolin. The letter read in
part: "Within my recollection, over the past eighteen
years, the Board has not formally determined the functions
and duties of Vice Presidents of the Association, or
assigned to them any specific tasks."449 Wilkins had
evidently spoken to President Arthur Spingarn on the
matter, and though he also did not recall the Board ever

having acted at any meeting to set up the functions and

 

448 Memorandum to Self from Miss Jackson, Secretary, 20 January 1950,
NAACP Board of Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

449 Ibid.

196

 

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duties of Vice Presidents, he suggested that maybe the
language of Article IV, Section 2 meant only "that the
Board might assign such duties from time to time as
occasions might arise."450 The question still remained,
however, for what duties and functions were Vice-Presidents
responsible?

Now, it is entirely possible that Bolin knew the
answer to the question she first asked. She had clearly
worked with many of the Association's Vice-Presidents
during her six years as a Member of the Board, and could
easily have tapped her memory on the extent of their
involvement in policy-making. She may well have been
unsure about the actual duties and responsibilities of
Vice—Presidents because quite possibly she could not
reconcile what she had witnessed as a Board member with
what others, inside and outside of the New York Branch,
were saying. During her six years as a Board member she
had observed the mostly male Vice-Presidents who attended
Board meetings voting without the imposition of any
disqualification by the Chairman. Yet, the New York
Branch's letter to the Association's Vice-Presidents (to
which Bolin must have been privvy) stated in relevant part:
"This is part of their plan to continue to use Judge
Bolin's name and prestige for the benefit of the N.A.A.C.P.

while depriving her of participating in making Board policy

 

45° Ibid.

197

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— for under the N.A.A.C.P. national constitution Vice-
Presidents may not vote!"451

With such conflicting information, not Clearly
addressed in the National Constitution, it was wise for
Bolin to defer to the National Office for Clarification
before assuming the office of Vice-President. The National
Office took the position that Vice-Presidents had no
constitutionally-assigned duties, but that at the
discretion of the Board, Vice—Presidents could be assigned
duties as the occasion arose. This, Bolin found
ridiculous. In a letter dated February 8, to the Chairman
of the Board of Directors, Dr. Louis T. Wright, she said,
"It is inconceivable and inconsistent that there should be
an office in an organization without duties. It must be
concluded that since the Board has failed to state
specifically the functions of a Vice—President, the
generally conceived and publicly accepted meaning of the
Office is accepted by the NAACP."452 Bolin reasoned that in
the absence of explicit duties, Vice-Presidents were then
bound by the customary practices of the office. She was
convinced that this interpretation was also accepted by
other Vice Presidents in the Association, because, as she
recalled, "during my six years as a member of the Board I

have observed Vice Presidents attending Board meetings,

 

451 Branch to Branch Presidents, 16 November 1949, NAACP Branch Files,
New York Branch Folder, New York, NAACP Papers.

452 Bolin to Dr. Louis T. Wright, 8 February 1950, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

198

 

 

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expressing their valuable opinions and participating in the
voting."453 Any other interpretation, she believed would
grossly mislead the public because, as she told Dr. Wright,
the public believed, and had a right to believe that "any
person who accepts election as an officer in the NAACP, as
in every other organization, shares in the grave
responsibility of making the Association's policy and in
the general administration of its affairs."454 With her
position clearly stated, Bolin then concluded her letter,
which was copied to all Vice Presidents, by accepting the
Vice-Presidency "with its concomitant responsibilities,
including those of attending Board meetings and discussing
and voting on the business of the Association."455

She therefore attended the National Board of Directors
meeting on February 14, 1950 intent on participating fully
in the business of the Association. However, when Bolin
raised her hand to vote against a motion made by Mrs.
Lampkin, the Chairman of the Board, Dr. Louis Wright, ruled
that as a Vice-President she was ineligible to vote on the

affairs of the Association.456 This was a ruling that, by

 

453 Ibid.
454 Ibid.

455 As copied the letter was sent to the following Vice- Presidents:
Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune, Miss Nannie H. Burroughs, Mr. Godfrey L.
Cabot, Hon. Arthur Capper, Miss Marion Cuthbert, Hon. Harry E. Davis,
Mr. Douglas P. Falconer, Dr. Buell G. Gallagher, Bishop John A. Gregg,
Dr. John Haynes Holmes, Dr. William Lloyd Imes, Hon. Hubert Humphrey,
Hon. Irs W. Jayne, Mr. Isadore Martin, Mr. H. L. Mitchell, Miss L.
Pearl Mitchell, Mr. T. G. Nutter, Miss Mary White Ovington, Dr. A.
Clayton Powell, Sr., Mr. A Philip Randolph, Rev. James H. Robinson, Mr.
Ike Smalls, Mr. Willard S. Townsend, Bishop W. J. Walls. Ibid.

456 Bolin to Spingarn, 9 March 1950, Box 2, Bolin Papers.

199

the facts, could not be supported by either Association

practice or Constitutional provision. Wright directed the

Acting Secretary to read Bolin's letter of February 8, to

the entire Board. He then asked Thurgood Marshall, as

Special Counsel, to read the memorandum that he had been
asked to prepare on the issue of Vice-Presidents.457 .After
the reading of letter and memorandum, the Board decided as

a body that Vice-Presidents could not vote. At that

moment, "Judge Bolin asked to be excused from the meeting,

 

stating that she had neither the time nor the desire to sit
and listen to the discussions unless she was able to

participate by voting."458

 

457 Marshall's memorandum said in part: "In most corporations there
are two bodies of officers - (1) directors who are elected by the
stockholders or membership and (2) administrative officers, such as
president, treasurer, secretary etc. (13 Am. Jur., Sec. 867). The
appointment or election of the latter group is usually entrusted to the
Board of Directors, although they may be elected by the stockholders or

the membership. (13 Am. Jur. Sec. 867). the
Directors are elected by the
are appointed by the Board.

purely administrative duties
such duties as are delegated
Am. Jur. Sec. 889). Minutes
1950,
Generally,

155 Md. 51, 141 A.434; Stott

NAACP Board of Directors Files,

In this Association,
membership. The administrative officers
These administrative officers perform

and have only such powers and perform only
to them by their appointing authority. (13
of Board of Directors Meeting, 14 February
Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

the administrative officers of a corporation are not
simultaneously directors of a corporation.
are usually a distinct and separate body of officers,

As a matter of fact they
Shriver v. Carlin
246 Mich. 267, 224

 

v. Stott Realty Co.

 

N.W.

623; Uniform Business Corporation Act,

section 32. However,

officers may be simultaneously directors of a corporation unless the

by-laws specifically prohibit this.

New York, section 45,
membership corporation shall

The Membership Corporation Law of

specifically provides that the directors of a

be elected by the members and that the

officers shall be chosen as provided by the by-laws. The Constitution

also by Article II limits the number of directors to 48.

To allow the

officers elected by the Directors to vote would be in effect adding to
the number of directors contrary to the express provisions of our

Constitution."

458 Minutes of Board of Directors Meeting, 14 February 1950, NAACP

Board of Directors Files,

Jane Bolin Folder,

NAACP Papers.

200

Bolin had made the decision at that point to resign.
But, her exit however quick would not be quiet. A few days
after the February 14, Board meeting, William Imes,
National Board Member and friend, tried to convince her
that although she had good and sufficient cause to resign,
if she did she would be doing "just what the reactionary
crowd at our NAACP wants you to do."459 Imes strongly
believed that to save face, the Board had made a gesture of
their respect for Bolin in the nomination and election to a
Vice—Presidency. He was, however, convinced that if Bolin
resigned, "even though they have tried to render a vice—

presidency innocuous, they will feel they have entirely

 

triumphed over you."460 He pleaded with her not to resign;
"[the NAACP] needs you and hundreds more like you," he told
her.461

There were many on the Board who supported her, and
she found staunch supporters in Judge Delany and William
Lloyd Imes. There had been many responses from the other
NAACP Vice-Presidents in support of Bolin's position on the
duties and responsibilities of the office. Bishop W. J.
Walls of Chicago, Illinois wrote: "Being one of the same
status, that is vice-president of the Association, I am

naturally interested. I fully agree with the position

 

459 William Lloyd Imes to Bolin, 17 February 1950, Box 2, Bolin Papers.

450 Ibid., Bolin had worked for on the Board with Imes, and he had been
an associate of her second husband, Mr. Walter Offutt whom she married
in 1950.

461 Ibid.

201

an

can

taken in your letter and will support it unreservedly. I
am simply acknowledging same in order to say, more power to
you."462 .A. Philip Randolph, one of the elders of the Civil
Rights Movement, and a National Vice-President,
acknowledged that he too did not know that Vice—Presidents
could not vote in the affairs of the Association. He
echoed Bolin's admonition that the Board be more specific
about the duties and responsibilities of Vice-Presidents.463
Even, Mr. Dickerson, a Member of the Board, admitted that
he was unsure of the voting rights of Vice—Presidents, and
that he had simply referred Judge Bolin to the Constitution
when she inquired about his opinion on the issue.464

Of course there were those Vice-Presidents who
believed that Judge Bolin had read too much into the
function of the office. Sgd. Buell Gallagher of
Washington, D. C., wrote directly to the Chairman of the
Board of Directors saying, "For whatever it is worth, may I
enter in the record the fact that, as a Vice-President of
the NAACP I have never suffered from the delusion that I
had voting power." He went on to say that if it were
physically possible, he would gladly attend meetings
regularly for the sole purpose of sharing in the

discussion. Gallagher said that he had enough confidence

 

462 Bishop W. J. Walls to Bolin, 1 March 1950, Box 3, Bolin Papers,
Schomburg Center, New York City Public Library.

453 Minutes of Board Meeting, 10 April 1950, NAACP Board of Directors
Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

454 Ibid.

202

awn-m "

 

in the democratic process to feel that the intelligent and
persuasive statement of a position was the only effectively
democratic procedure, and that voting was merely a means of
recording the results of sound deliberations. Gallagher
was obviously not familiar with the power of a vote. Maybe
Gallagher and others like him were willing to sacrifice

meaningful input for the sake of powerful titles. Bolin

had been both an active Branch official and an active 1
National Board Member, and did not have half as much I
confidence, as Gallagher, in the democratic process of the 1
Association. Gallagher believed that the power of a Vice

President was no more than that of any member not directly

elected by the membership, because as he saw it, "Only

those who are subject to the direct votes of the membership

ought to have the power to vote in Board meetings."465 He

seemed unwilling to apply the same logic to the Board.

Could it be that, like many in the National Office, he saw

the real power as sitting in the Board and not necessarily

in the "persuasive" voice of the membership?466

On March 9th, 1950 Judge Bolin formally submitted her

 

resignation as Vice—President of the NAACP, in the form of

 

465 Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting, 10 April 1950, NAACP
Board of Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

456 Gallagher's attitude about surrendering to the "democratic"
procedures of the Association, only reaffirms what Bolin had been
fighting against - the notion that all the brains of the Association
lie only in the National Board and Staff.

203

a three-page letter, to President Arthur Spingarn.467 She
also released the letter of resignation to the press in
mimeographed copies, which were in the hands of newspapers
before it was delivered to Arthur Spingarn on the morning
of March 13. By noon on March 13th, the National Office
had been bombarded with telegrams from newspapers asking

for comment on Bolin's resignation. The Norfolk Journal

 

and Guide wrote: "PLEASE IMMEDIATELY WIRE COMMENT ON

 

RESIGNATION STATEMENT RELEASED BY JUSTICE BOLIN STATEMENT
ATTACKS POLICY OF NAACP TOP COMMAND ETC." The Carolina
TThee, of Durham, North Carolina made a similar request, as
did The Call, the Southwest's Leading Weekly of Kansas,
Missouri. The National Office wired responses that were

mechanical at best. To the Norfolk Journal and Guide, Roy

 

Wilkins wrote: "BOLIN LETTER RELEASED TO PRESS BEFORE IT
REACHED BOARD YESTERDAY. REGRET I CANNOT COMMENT. HOWEVER
STATEMENT FROM DR. LOUIS T. WRIGHT, CHAIRMAN OF BOARD, WILL

BE RELEASED IN TWENTYFOUR HOURS." To the Carolina Times,

 

he wrote: "REGRET THAT COMMENT ON JUDGE BOLIN LETTER BY
CHAIRMAN OF OUR BOARD HELD UP AND CANNOT REACH YOU BY YOUR

DEADLINE TONIGHT." He told reporters for the Afro—American

 

and the New York Amsterdam News that he personally could

 

not comment, but that the Board had authorized the Chairman

 

457 Bolin to Spingarn, 9 March 1950; NAACP Board of Directors Files,
Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers. Her resignation was effective
immediately.

204

to issue a statement which would be released in a few

days.468
Surprised, embarrassed, and exposed, the National

Office needed time to regroup, but until then Judge Bolin's

letter stood "as a true statement of conditions," in the

absence of any other to refute it.469 Her letter read in
Exart:

As you know I accepted the Vice Presidency with
the interpretation of its responsibilities as
including that of participating in the business
of the association. At the Board meeting on
February 14th, the Chairman of the Board ruled
that as Vice President I am ineligible to vote on
the affairs of the association. In view of Mr.
Wilkins' letter to me of January 23rd stating
that the Board had never provided for any duties
or functions for Vice Presidents as it is
required to do by the NAACP constitution and in
view of the Board Chairman's ruling that Vice
Presidents cannot participate in determining
policy or program for the organization, I find
that twenty Vice Presidents (a ridiculous number)
are merely names on NAACP letterheads, used to
lend prestige to the association and to mislead
the public that these persons have responsibility
in formulating policy. I refuse to share in this
deception and I refuse to let the public hold me
in part responsible for the actions of the NAACP
without having the power to vote on these

actions.
There are several areas in which I have dissented
while a Board member. I could not sanction the

paid staff overwhelming the Board to the extent
of usurping the Board's function of making

 

458 Wilkins to Louis Wright, 15 March 1950, NAACP Board of Directors
Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers; Telegrams from Norfolk Journal
and Guide, the Carolina Times to the National Office, March 13, 1950,
Box 3, Bolin Papers.

459 Wilkins to Wright, 15 March 1950, NAACP Board of Directors Files,
Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

 

 

205

policy....As I stated in a Board meeting last
year, we have in the NAACP the spectacle of the
tail (the staff) wagging the dog (the Board).
Nor could I appreciate the contemptuous and
scornful attitude on the part of the paid staff
and a majority of the Board toward the NAACP
Branches and people who work in the

Branches....In other words, all the brains in the
NAACP lie only in the national Board and
staff....

I am further of the belief that the NAACP program
has become sterile and barren and that is a major
reason for its membership dropping from nearly a
half million to about one-eight of a million in
the last few years. The only part of the NAACP
which is not programmatically bankrupt today is
its legal department which is doing an important
and superb job....

I have become persona non grata to the NAACP
hierarchy because of the positions I have taken
and I have been duly purged on the Board....It
appears to me that for some time now the NAACP
high command has been more interested in personal
and political intrigue than it has been in
discharging that trust efficiently and to the
fullest.470

Bolin did not simply resign as Vice-President. She used
her resignation as a public platform for Challenging the
structure, program, policies, and personnel of the NAACP.
Her tenure of protest on the Board had resulted in her
removal without personal appeal. But, she was determined
that her withdrawal from the Vice-Presidency would never be
relegated to the margins of internal correspondence.
Information about her resignation was not leaked, but
shared fully with the press. This woman, who had always
lent her voice to the struggles of others, made a decision

to speak for herself in a loud resounding voice. She,

 

470 Bolin to Spingarn, 9 March 1950, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

206

em.

 

therefore, preempted any mis-information about her
resignation by baring ALL that she had said to the NAACP
President. How empowering that must have been for a woman,
who had only recently endured the insult of learning about
her impending removal from the National Board in the
morning paper.

It was now the National Office's turn to play "catch
up" with Bolin's statement which had already saturated the
conscience of the Association membership. The National
Office had authorized the Chairman of the Board to issue a
statement, in an effort to get the viewpoint of the Board
into the newspapers. However, in accordance with
resolutions passed at the March 13th Board meeting, the
statement was withheld pending a committee conference with
Bolin. At the March 13th meeting, Arthur Spingarn made a
motion, which was seconded by Judge Hastie, that the
Chairman of the Board be authorized to send a letter to

Judge Bolin which essentially accepts her resignation.

Upon substitute motion made by Judge Delany, it was decided

by a 10 to 5 vote that the Chairman of the Board appoint a

committee, including himself, to confer with Judge Bolin to

see if she would reconsider her resignation.471

 

471 Judge Charles E. Toney, Dr. Channing H. Tobias, and Dr. Louis T.
Wright, Chairman of Board were appointed to serve on the committee.
There was some division in reaching the decision to ask Bolin to
withdraw her resignation. Minutes of Board of Directors meeting, 13
March 1950, NAACP Board of Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP
Papers.

207

N. ..

In commenting on the actions of the Board, Bolin
stated, "I shall always be pleased to meet with this
committee or any N.A.A.C.P. Board committee, to discuss not
only my resignation, but any matter or interest to the
Association."472 Arthur Spingarn, the President of the
NAACP, was one of the five who opposed Delany's motion.

His opposition stemmed from, what he perceived to be, the
lack of "good faith" on Bolin's part.473 However, Bolin
felt that the action of the Board by a 10 to 5 vote to
confer with her "indicates that a two—thirds majority of
the Board, aware of my twenty years' service to the
N.A.A.C.P., does not consider my resignation motivated by
'bad faith' or personal reasons as publicly Charged by one
or two Board members."474 Judge Toney supported Spingarn's
argument, and Marshall's earlier memorandum. He stated
that since the Association was a membership corporation and
the laws of New York State applied, then the control of the
organization was in the Board of Directors only.475

However relevant and truthful these summations were,

they could not negate the fact that during Judge Bolin's

 

472 "For Immediate Release," NAACP Board of Director Files, Jane Bolin
Folder, NAACP Papers.

473 Spingarn saw in Bolin's release of her resignation to the press,
and in her belief that Vice-Presidents could vote, a lack of good
faith. He essentially argued that Bolin knew or should have known that
Vice-Presidents did not vote, since he knew the duties of the office of
President and that on one had told him what they were. In essence he
imputed the responsibility to find out what your duties are as an
officer onto the officer. Ibid.

474 "Bolin Resignation Not Yet Accepted By NAACP," Journal and Guide,
Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

475 Ibid.

 

208

1 plum-

immkfi!

years as a Board member, Vice-Presidents frequently voted
on the affairs of the Association. Judge Bolin, and not
necessarily the office of Vice—President, may have been the
intended target of the Board's timely interpretation of the
vice—presidency.

Over a month after Bolin released her letter of
resignation to the press, the committee still had not
conferred with her as of April 18th. Wilkins had managed,
however, to convince the Board to release Dr. Wright's
comment on Judge Bolin's letter. He was convinced that the E
longer the Board waited to publicly address Bolin's letter,
the more they would have to prove. He offered the leading

editorial in the Afro-American for March 18, as an

 

indication of the type of impact Judge Bolin's letter had

had. Headlined "Rumblings At the NAACP," the Afro-American

 

editorial said that Judge Bolin's Charges called for a
searching inquiry with the public being fully informed of
the findings. It called for "direct and positive replies,"
and felt that until this was done, "the future of the NAACP

seems to be definitely in jeopardy."476 There were similar

 

concerns raised in other newspapers, whose headlines ranged
from the dramatic "NAACP Branded Sterile, Barren Judge
Bolin Rips Officers And Quits Job" of the New York

Amsterdam News and "Justice Jane Bolin Quits NAACP: Blasts

 

 

475 The editorial also stated that "Unfortunately, the charges made by
Justice Bolin have been heard rather frequently within the past year
and following the theory that where there is smoke there usually is
fire, the public has become increasingly confused by the charges and
counter-Charges." Editorial, 18 March 1950, Afro-American.

 

209

'Contemptuous Attitude'" of the New York Age to "Judge

 

Jane Bolin Quits NAACP: Protests Lack Of Power Of Vice

President" of The Call. In every story, however, there was

 

the sense that Bolin's resignation was expected. For

example, the March 18, New York Amsterdam News story

 

stated that Judge Bolin's resignation had been expected in
New York circles since early in January when she was not

returned to the Board of Directors.477 The New York Age

 

March 18, article spoke of a "long simmering feud between
Domestic Relations Justice Jane Bolin and national officers
of the NAACP."478 The notion that there was continued
disunity within the Association hierarchy certainly
justified Wilkins's suspicion that the organization's
ability to stand together in the long fight for African
Americans was being questioned.

Wilkins was equally concerned that any further delay
of comment from the Board would place the Association in a
more embarrassing position should the conference with Bolin
net her return as Vice—President. Wilkins told Wright,
"Suppose, in your conference with Judge Bolin, she should
accept the invitation of the committee and agree to
withdraw her resignation. Could the Association then issue
any statement condemning her letter? Would we not be in

the position of having begged a person to return to her

 

477 "Justice Bolin Rips Officers And Quits Job," 18 March 1950, New
York Amsterdam News, Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

478 "Justice Jane Bolin Quits NAACP: Blasts 'Contemptuous Attitude',"
18 March 1950, New York Age, Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

 

210

r
i
1

 

office and thereby tied our hands to criticize her views
publicly?"479 In consideration of Wilkins's statements, and
the fact that scheduling further delayed the committee
conference with Judge Bolin, the following comment by the
Chairman of the Board was set for immediate press release:
"....This action suggests strongly that Judge
Bolin's principal purpose was not to discuss a
point of difference with the Association and its
Board, but to attack the organization itself.
"The ostensible reason for the writing of the
letter and the tendering of her resignation as a
vice president is the alleged fresh discovery by
Judge Bolin that vice presidents of the NAACP do
not have the power of directors of the NAACP,
that is, they do not have the power to vote on
issues....Judge Bolin's letter tries to give the
impression that she was unaware of this, and that
as soon as she discovered it she offered her
resignation. In the light of several known facts
and incidents, as well as in light of reasonable
intelligence, it is doubtful that this contention

is in good faith."480

 

479 Wilkins to Wright, 15 March 1950, NAACP Board of Directors Files,
Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

480 Wright's statement was supplemented with four detailed sections of
examples in support of the charge that Judge Bolin's actions were not
in good faith. See Appendix. Wilkins attached a cover letter, with his
own comments, to a desk copy of Wright's comment for William Gibson,
Editor of the Afro—American. Not realizing, or not caring that
Wilkins's comments were intended to be "off—the-record" Gibson printed
them, thereby bringing yet another dimension to the controversy.

 

211

 

 

The National Office was not pleased with the type of
coverage given to the Board's response to Bolin's letter of
resignation. Wilkins, however, was quite pleased with the

manner in which the Norfolk Journal and Guide handled the

 

whole matter. In a letter to Bernard Young of the Journal

and Guide, he commended him for treating the Board's

 

response "as important news and in a manner calculated to
give your readers a rounded picture of the situation."481
On the contrary, there were "Eastern papers which gave
Judge Bolin's letter front—page prominence," and carried
the Board's comment "on the next to the last page and the
other tacked a few paragraphs on to another story over on
an inside page."482 The "Eastern papers" to which Wilkins

referred were Clearly the New York Amsterdam News and the

 

New York Age. The Black Press, as a tool of the African

 

American community, was as involved in the matter of this
controversy as it was in its dissemination. For obvious

reasons, the New York Amsterdam News and other New York-

 

based Black newspapers would have been sensitive to the

position of the New York (Harlem) Branch of the NAACP.483

 

"Statement on Judge Jane M. Bolin's Letter," by Dr. Louis T. Wright,
Chairman of the Board of the NAACP, 15 March 1950, NAACP Board of
Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers. See also, Wilkins to
William Gibson, 17 March 1950, and 22 March 1950, NAACP Board of
Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

481 Wilkins to Bernard Young, 22 March 1950, NAACP Board of Directors
Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

492 Ibid.

483 As mentioned earlier, the New York Amsterdam News and the New York
hge were privvy to the on-going struggle of Bolin and the New York
Branch, and kept the issues in the news with or without confirmation
from the National Office.

 

212

For whatever reason there were other newspapers
outside of New York that seemed to show favor with Bolin's
and the New York Branch's position. William Walker's "Down

the Big Road" column in The Cleveland Call and Post of

 

March 25, 1950 truly angered Wilkins. In a very bitter
letter to Walker, he complained that although Walker had
grasped Judge Bolin's "specious reasons for resigning as
vice-president" and had published the Board's reply, he
chose nevertheless to continue to "heap praise upon Judge
Bolin's calculated attack upon the Association."484 Wilkins
was truly incensed by Walker's article, which showed very
little, if any understanding of the National Office's
position. In his opening paragraph, Walker stated: "Judge
Jane Bolin of the New York City Domestic Relations Court,
has done a real service to the NAACP by resigning. Her
letter of resignation from the national board as one of its
twenty vice-presidents, brings out into the open, most of
the complaints hundreds of other members have been making
but have not been able to get into public print as did
Judge Bolin." Walker continued, "I congratulate Judge
Bolin for having courage enough to resent being made a
figurehead or stooge. The obvious reason for denying Judge

Bolin the right to vote was because previously she had

 

484 Wilkins to William 0. Walker, 20 April 1950, NAACP Board of
Directors Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

213

 

I!

h L’.‘
J-

 

‘93 L'i! .. '

shown independence and voted her conscience rather than

being a yes-member for an already agreed upon program."485
Bolin had pierced the veil of this corporate body from

the inside out. And, in the process she had exposed the
weaknesses of an organization that needed to be strong for
all African Americans. Many, like Walker, praised her for
her courage and commitment, but others harshly criticized
her. Denton J. Brooks, Jr. of New York City wrote Dr.
Wright bemoaning just how grieved he was to read of "Judge
Jane M. Bolin's attack on the NAACP." He further
complained that while he could not pretend to comment on

any of the issues involved, he felt that "this method of

airing differences can be more harmful than helpful."486 A
memorandum from Charles H. White, NAACP member and self-
proclaimed Expert Witness for the Justice Department on
policies, program, activities, teachings, and philosophy of
the Communist Party and front organizations since 1937,
represented the tone of several pieces of communication

sent to the National Office and the newspapers regarding F

 

Bolin's letter of resignation. Addressed to the Editor of

 

485 Ibid.

486 The idea of administrative anonymity seems to have great currency
with the leadership and quite a few of the membership of the NAACP.
But is this endemic to the NAACP, all Civil Rights organizations, or
all organizations, and does political time and place impact the desire
for such anonymity? These are questions which will not be given close
attention here, but are questions that elicit further inquiry. Denton

214

the Pittsburg Courier, the NAACP Acting Secretary Mr. Roy
Wilkins, and the New York Branch Secretary Mr. Charles A.
Levy, the memorandum stated:

Justice Jane Bolin has resigned from the NAACP -
I say GOOD RIDANCE. I hope she has the decency
to resign as Justice of Family Court as well. It
occurs to me that it is worth mentioning that
Bolin, Delany, and Justine Wise Polier, all of
Family Court NY City, are all bed fellows of such
be kind to Commy causes as Justice Frankfurter of
the Supreme Court showed for the traitor Alger
Hiss. Not being able to use the NAACP for a

Soviet Trojan Horse, they now hope to destroy
lt.487

Bolin's consistent activism on and off of the bench, at
times with the help of her judicial colleagues, had
obviously ruffled the feathers of the more conservative
Board, Branch membership of the NAACP, and even of ordinary
citizens. She considered this a small price to pay for
"informing the membership of some internal conditions which
appeared to me to need correction, if our Association is to
be the effective and powerful instrument we want and
need."488

Whether in response to membership pressure, internal
pressure, or past service, the Board once again nominated

and elected Bolin as vice-president of the NAACP at its

 

J. Brooks, Jr. to Wright, 23 March 1950, NAACP Board of Directors
Files, Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

487 Charles H. White to the Editor, Pittsburg Courier, Wilkins, and
Charles A. Levy, 20 March 1950, NAACP Board of Directors Files, Jane
Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

488 "Bolin Resignation Not Yet Accepted by NAACP," Journal and Guide,
Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers, Schomburg Center, New York City
Public Library.

 

215

ti.” ‘n’-02.5!

January 2nd, 1951 Board meeting. In a letter to the
Chairman of the Board, she thanked the Board for their
gracious action, and stated that her resignation in 1950
was a "considered decision reached after long thought and
great deliberation." She made her resignation from the
1951 vice-presidency effective immediately, and reiterated,
"My feeling has not Changed that I do not care as a
national officer to assume responsibility to the public for
the Association's decisions when I am powerless to affect
those decisions through voting."489

Judge Bolin risked more than a Board membership and a
vice—presidency in the NAACP in her crusade to expose and
hopefully correct the inconsistencies in Association
proceedings and management. In her fight for
"participatory democracy" she risked her livelihood, and
her career. She even risked reappointment to the bench.
As discussed in Chapter 4, her 1949 reappointment to the
bench proved to be the most difficult. Though there is
evidence to suggest that there were political reasons for
the difficulty in securing her 1949 reappointment. There
is just as much evidence to suggest that the entire NAACP
controversy, complete with daily headlines, might have
hardened O'Dwyer's reluctance to reappoint her in 1949.
The era of O'Dwyer, according to Thomas Kessner, was the

era of the Cold War mentality, the fears that led to House

 

489 Bolin to Wright, 14 February 1951, NAACP Board of Directors Files,
Jane Bolin Folder, NAACP Papers.

216

1
1
1
;

 

 

Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) excesses, of the
new conservatism, and of the passing of insurgency
politics.490 Judge Bolin's dissident vocality was,
therefore, as out of place in O'Dwyer's administration as
it was within the NAACP. Duly purged from the NAACP Board
of Directors, and essentially silenced as a vice-president,
she had become "persona non grata" to the National Office.
Nevertheless, she spoke the loudest, and risked the most,
as a National Officer. Hubert Delany's years of activism
had placed him on the same philosophical plane as Bolin,
yet interestingly, he had eluded the "machinery" of the
National Office. Though there were many spirited exchanges
between him and the Executive and Acting Secretary, none
had ever resulted in his banishment from the policy-making
body.

Bolin's legacy with the NAACP has only just begun to
unfold. And, it will, undoubtedly, be debated through her
positioning as Charter Member, Branch Official, Member of
the Board of Directors, Vice—President, and persona non
grata to the NAACP. Though the expansive contouring of her
organizational life is susceptible to portrayal as
conventional and insurgent, it was nonetheless
characterized by her palpable commitment to the democratic
ideals of the NAACP, and the philosophy of "participatory

democracy." This Chapter utilized the portrayal of

 

490 Thomas Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia, pages 570-572.

 

217

 

insurgency to best answer the question it raised in the
beginning: How and Why did Judge Bolin plummet to the
depths of the Association's disregard?

Yet, as the historical record is reassessed to reflect
the contributions and significance of this little-known
civil rights trailblazer, the question still remains, how
did such a visible political subject become invisible to
the historical eye? This question, or rather this process,

will be the focus of the concluding Chapter that follows.

218

CONCLUSION

This concluding chapter offers some preliminary
thoughts on the process of historical invisibility, or, in
the case of Black women, the process of "becoming
invisible." More specifically, it explores how Jane
Matilda Bolin, a prominent, vocal, and very visible African
American woman jurist of the early twentieth century,
became invisible to the historical eye. Using Ann Firor
Scott's essay, "On Seeing and Not Seeing: A Case of
Historical Invisibility,"49l as a point of departure, I will
examine Bolin's obscurity in the historical record in
relation to her lived visibility.

The foregoing Chapters attest to Jane Bolin's lived
visibility. It situates her in the professional and
political milieu of the majority white, and minority black,
communities of New York City. Her volunteer public service
spanned more than fifty years, and included the co-founding
of the Wiltwyck School for Boys with Eleanor Roosevelt,
with whom she had a very close and public friendship. The
Wiltwyck School for Boys was a direct response to the lack
of City—run institutions for young boys compounded by the
race—based discrimination of many private institutions.

As Vice President of the New York City Branch of the

NAACP, and Member of the Board of the NAACP's national

 

491 Ann Firor Scott, "On Seeing and Not Seeing: A Case of Historical
Invisibility," Journal of American History LXXI (June 1984):7-21.

 

219

 

office, Bolin was at the helm of the nation's premier Civil
rights organization. She was one of the few women, black
or white, to be elected to such offices. But, she did not
mimic, nor succumb to, the dominant male leadership of the
organization. Instead, she charted a path of
"participatory democracy," which she felt corresponded more
closely with the organization's mission of equality. But,
for many in the NAACP's national office, engendering such
participatory democracy within the organization smacked of
radicalism. Such conservatism therefore predicted that she
would be accused of compromising the integrity and
effectiveness of the NAACP when she publicly exposed the
cleavage in leadership, and the great divide that existed
between organizational rhetoric and reality.492

As an Assistant Corporation Counsel, and Domestic
Relations Court judge, Bolin was unquestionably a member of
New York City's professional elite. Moreover, to the
extent that "political function may be broadly defined as
the activity of those who exercise legitimate authority to
award limited resources - including property or legal
rights to one person or group among several competing for
them," Judge Bolin was in the mainstream of political
activity.493 Everyday the courts, read as judges, directly

or indirectly, "allocate the tangible benefits in our

 

492 The previous chapter gives a full account of her Challenges with
the NAACP.

493 Russel Wheeler, "The Political Function of Court Systems,"
Judicature 57 (1984): 296.

 

220

 

society” and that, according to Wheeler, constitutes
political activity.494 Furthermore, as the first African
American woman in this position, Bolin became a "highly
visible political minorit[y]” who stayed under the
proverbial political microscope, and on the pages of the
various organs of contemporary political discourse.495
Bolin's educational pioneering, as it occurred, may
well have been confined to the halls of Wellesley College
and Yale University Law School.496 Her professional
pioneering, however, was immediately inserted into the
collective consciousness of American society. Her 1937
assignment with the Office of the Corporation Counsel of
New York Law Department, and her 1939 appointment to the
Domestic Relations Court of the City of New York were
featured in newspapers and magazines across the nation.

One newspaper heading said, "Judge Bolin Hopes Choice Will

Inspire Other Women." Another heading read simply "A Sepia

Portia-Jane Bolin.”497 Whatever the caption, there was

 

494 Wheeler, "Court Systems," 296.

495 Political Scientist Jewel Prestage uses this phrase to capture the
political vulnerability of Black women in the judiciary. See, Jewel
Prestage, "Black Women Judges: An Examination of Their Socio-Economic,
Educational and Political Backgrounds and Judicial Placement," in
Readings in American Political Issues, ed. Franklin D. Jones and
Michael 0. Adams with Sanders Anderson, Jr. and Tandy Tollerson
(Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 1987), 324-344.

495 There is no evidence to indicate immediate newspaper coverage of
Bolin's graduation from Wellesley College and Yale Law School.
Newspaper reports of her pioneering status as the first African
American woman to graduate from both schools seem to surface years
later, during the time of her appointments to the Office of the
Corporation Counsel and the Domestic Relations Court.

 

497 The following are some of the sources that carried stories about
Bolin's appointment: "A Sepia Portia - Jane Bolin," Apex News 9, no.

221

flaw ' _
Y
1

I

clearly nothing routine or ordinary about the import of the
subject.

The nation had been introduced to its first Black
woman judge in a very public way, and in Bolin, it would
see a pioneer for justice. In 1944, local Poughkeepsie
newspapers applauded her for having "the courage to return
to her native Poughkeepsie and blow the top off that town's
anti—Negro practices.”498 During her second appointed term
as judge, Bolin was reintroduced because of her unequivocal
commitment to the ideals of the NAACP. The nation's
Dailies diligently reported on her tenure of dissent with
the NAACP, especially as it culminated in the 1949-1950
intra-organizational conflict.499

Decades later in 1978, on the occasion of her
retirement, Judge Bolin's importance and visibility were

re—inscribed onto the collective consciousness of another

 

13 (1937); "Miss Jane Bolin Appointed Asst. to Corporation Counsel,"
New York Age, 27 April 1937; "Miss Jane Bolin," Richmond Planet, 17
April 1937; The Crisis, September, 1939; Davis, "Judge Bolin Hopes
Choice Will Inspire Other Women," Philadelphia Tribune, 17 August 1939;
"New York's Fourth Negro Judge, Now on Bench," New York Age, 29 July
1939.

498 "Hats Off!" PM's Daily Picture Magazine 1 March 1944, Clipping
File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

499 The role of the press in this conflict is dealt with in great
detail in Chapter 5. Nevertheless, the following are some of the
sources that featured the controversy as it unfolded: "Removal of
Judge Bolin From NAACP Board Bared," Afro-American, 8 October 1949;
"NAACP Feud Cools Off," New York Amsterdam News, 5 November 1949;
"Justice Jane Bolin Quits NAACP: Blasts 'Contemptuous Attitude,'" hew
York Age, 18 March 1950; "Judge J. M. Bolin Raps NAACP Policy in
Resigning Top Post," Journal and Guide, 18 March 1950; "Judge Jane
Bolin Quits NAACP: Protests Lack of Power of Vice President," The Call,
17 March 1950; "NAACP Branded Sterile, Barren: Justice Bolin Rips
Officers And Quits Job," New York Amsterdam News, 18 March 1950;
"Rumblings at the NAACP," Afro-American, 18 March 1950, Clipping File,
Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

 

 

 

 

222

 

 

generation of Americans. As if intending to revive the
historical record, the press carried stories about Bolin's
many remarkable firsts as an African American woman, and
paid tribute to her outstanding record and reform
activities as a judge. At this juncture in her
professional life the mainstream white newspapers seem to
have taken up the pen of re-inscription on her behalf.500
Although coverage of her NAACP leadership role was
perfunctory at best, it nonetheless sketched a past that
summoned further inquiryx501 Judy Klemesrud, of the New

York Times, explained that the "FCJ-l” on Judge Bolin's

 

license plate stood for "Family Court Judge-1” because she
ranked "first in years of service, with 40 years on the
bench, as a judge for the Family Court of the State of New
York and its predecessor courts.”502 Klemesrud stated
further that Judge Bolin "had been determined to wage a
fight for racial justice in her career ever since she was a
child growing up in an upper—middle-class family in
Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and was shocked by reports of lynchings

in the South.”503 The American Bar Association Journal

 

 

500 See for example, Sidney Fields, "Legacy of a Family Court Judge,"
The New York Daily News, January 1978; Judy Klemesrud, "For a
Remarkable Judge, a Reluctant Retirement," New York Times, December
1978; David Margolick, "In Retrospect, Father Didn't Know Best in the
Case of a Daughter with a Habit of Making History," The New York Times,
14 May 1993.

501 The mere mention of an African American woman actively serving in a
policy-making position within the NAACP prompted me to investigate her
tenure further.

 

 

 

502 Judy Klemesrud, "For a Remarkable Judge, A Reluctant Retirement,"
New York Times 8 December 1978.

503 Ibid.

 

223

notes that Bolin "went into the legal profession at a time

 

when women and blacks seldom went to law school,” and that
"Since she was both, she had tremendous odds to
overcome.”504

As recent as 1993, the New York Times featured in its

 

"Law" section a retrospective article on Judge Bolin.505 It
told of her many pioneering achievements, of how she got
there, and of her experiences when she "arrived.” In
juxtaposition was an article on President Clinton's
nomination of Lani Guinier to head the Justice Department's
Civil rights division, and the "controversy" surrounding
her scholarship on the undemocratic nature of majority
rule.506 In an instant, there was a spatial and
generational association between these two women - both
black, both Yale Law School graduates, one eighty-five
years of age, the other forty—five years of age, both
pioneers in the legal profession. However inadvertent the

association might have been, the articles spoke directly to

 

the issue of black women's advancement in the legal

 

504 "New York's First Black Woman Judge Retires," American Bar
Association Journal, June 1979, Box 1, Bolin Papers.

505 David Margolick, "In Retrospect, father didn't know best in the
case of a daughter with a habit of making history," New York Times 14
May 1993: B8 L.

506 Guinier, who was counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and
Educational Fund from 1981-1988, has written extensively about the
effectiveness of the black vote in a majority white society. She
believes that, without some form of "weighted-voting," elected blacks
will always be in the minority and consistently outvoted by a white
majority. See for example, "Second Proms and Second Primaries: The
Limits of Majority Rule," The Boston Review September—October 1992; The
Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative
Democracy (New York: The Free Press, 1994.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

224

 

profession, and, quite appropriately, to the silencing of
vocal, in a word, “unruly” black women. In the subject of
Lani Guinier was provided yet another frame with which to
analyze Bolin’s early professional and political
experiences.

The press had remained fascinated with Judge Bolin,
fifteen years after her retirement, even as scholars of
civil rights, blacks and women remained oblivious to, or
disinterested in, her contribution and complexity.507 In
glaring contrast to her lived and reported visibility, -
Bolin remained virtually invisible in the historical
record.

According to Scott, historical invisibility is the
process by which "a significant phenomenon for which all
the data have existed, much of it readily available,” still
remains almost totally invisible to historians.508 In the
case of Jane Bolin, the data that extols her political life
have always existed in the very public instruments of
press, profession, and organization. One needs only look

to contemporary newspapers, and to the national and branch

 

records of the NAACP, to see the image of this political g
figure. With the exception of court transcripts made "

inaccessible because of confidentiality, there is an extant

 

507 Black Women in America: An Historical Eneyclgpedia (Brooklyn:
Carlson, 1993) provides the only substantial scholarly overview of
Judge Bolin. It provides a glimpse into the life of one of this
nation's most interesting women of the early twentieth century.

508 Scott, "On Seeing and Not Seeing," 8.

225

 

record of Bolin's visibility. Indeed, one can argue that
there is a “living” record of her legacy in the continuing
efforts to the narrow the gap between the ideals and
customs of the Family Court system. Why then has the
historical record been so slow to recognize this activist-
reformer in all her complexity?

In "Seeing and Not Seeing: A Case of Historical
Invisibility," Scott considers the voluntary association as
a case of historical invisibility to speculate on the
question of "seeing and not seeing," and, on how things
previously invisible come to be visible.509 Although my
immediate concern is more with how the visible becomes
invisible, Scott's speculation on the reverse does inform
my analysis. She frames her discussion with the truism
that "people see most easily things they are prepared to
see and overlook those they do not expect to encounter."510
Accordingly, she contends that "A sensitive artist will see
things at the Louvre invisible to the casual visitor from
the tour bus," just as a good novelist will "notice things
most people overlook."511 The dictum "History is past
politics," similarly told "historians what to look for —

and what to ignore."512
Called "one of the most significant of American

institutions" by Alexis de Tocqueville, the voluntary

 

509 Scott, "On Seeing and Not Seeing," 8.
510 Scott, "On Seeing and Not Seeing," 7 (emphasis mine.)
511 Scott, "On Seeing and Not Seeing," 7.

226

 

 

 

association had been a familiar American institution.

Scott reminds us that, as Americans, we had even come to

accept ourselves as a "nation of joiners."513
Notwithstanding such familiarity, the voluntary association

had not evoked much interest in scholars. Familiarity had

in this instance bred neglect, according to Scott.514
However, her redemptive efforts to shed light on this
American institution overlooked the significance of black
women's voluntary associations. In a subsequent essay,
"Most Invisible of All: Black Women's Voluntary
Associations," Scott admits,

In the process of lecturing everyone else about the
dangers of not seeing what was before one's eyes, I
had exemplified the error, for though there were
dutifully collected references to black women's
organizations in footnotes, nowhere had I recognized
the central role of these organizations in the

creation of the black community.515
She had overlooked the significance of black women's
voluntary associations precisely because she did "not
expect to encounter" them in a discussion of "one of the
most significant of American institutions." But were not
black women's voluntary associations part of this larger

American institution?

 

 

 

512 Scott, "On Seeing and Not Seeing," 7.
513 Scott, "On Seeing and Not Seeing," 8.
514 Ibid.

515 Scott, "Most Invisible of All: Black Women's Voluntary
Associations," Journal of Southern History LVU, no. 1 (1990): 3.

 

 

Have scholars similarly overlooked Judge Bolin because
they do not expect to encounter black women in the NAACP's
national leadership, or among early judicial appointments?

The historical record is replete with evidence to support

 

black women's integral role in building NAACP membership.
The NAACP in the 19305 and 19405 depended on the formidable
fund-raising talents of black women like Daisy Lampkins, fie
Juanita Mitchell, and Ella Baker.516 But has this pervasive

representation of black women as the fund-raising backbone

of the NAACP distorted their multi-dimensional association

with the organization? Has this representation

successfully pushed the black women of the board, and

especially one as “unruly" as Bolin, to the fringes of V
historical memory?

There are a few biographies of black women in branch
leadership, but none of black women who served as vice-
presidents or board members of the NAACP's national
office.517 The many histories of the NAACP overlook the
contribution of these women, and therefore overlook Bolin's

tenure, and the controversy that surrounded her resignation

 

515 Daisy Lampkins was regional field secretary of the NAACP from 1930
until 1935, when she was appointed national field secretary; Juanita
Jackson was the NAACP's national youth director from 1935 to 1938; Ella
Baker, one of the most important women in the civil rights movement of
the 19505 and 19605, was assistant field secretary of the NAACP in
1941, and worked as director of NAACP branches from 1943 to 1946.
Darlene Clark Hine, William Hine, and Stanley Harrold, African-American
Odyssey (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000), 433-434.

517 Biographies of black women active in NAACP branch leadership
include, Joanne Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound (New York: John Wiley
and Sons, 1998); Merline Pitre, In Struggle Against Jim Crow: Lulu B.
White and the NAACP, 1900-1957 (Houston: Texas A&M University Press,
1999).

 

 

 

 

228

 

 

as vice-president. Biographies of, and articles about,
Ella Baker, make no mention of Bolin. The possibility that
she may have influenced Baker's philOSOphy of
"participatory democracy,” is therefore never considered.
That Baker could have given formal statement to what Bolin
practiced and fought for is also never entertained; on this
the record remains silent.518

I agree with Scott that selective and partial vision
is inherent in historical inquiry'.519 But, if present
conditioning determines what we are prepared to encounter,
then the increasing presence of black women in today's
legal profession ought to have sufficient to prod
historical inquiry of their past. I am not suggesting that
a researcher would have found black women where there was
none, only that an examination unrestricted by narrow

paradigms would have accounted for their presence or

 

518 Some of the works specifically dealing with the NAACP, its I;
activities, and its leadership are: Charles F. Kellogg, NAACP: A '
History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967); Barbara Joyce
Ross, J. E. Spingarn and the Rise of the NAACP, 1911-1939 (Boston:
Atheneum, 1972); August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, ed. Along the Color
Line: Explorations in the Black Experience (Urbana: University of 1.
Illinois Press, 1976); Roy Wilkins with Tom Mathews, Standing Fast: The .4
Autobiography of Roy Wilkins (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994). Works on
Baker include, Joanne Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound (New York: John
Wiley and Sons, 1998); Carol Mueller, "Ella Baker and the Origins of
'Participatory Democracy,'" in Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Anne
Rouse, and Barbara Woods, ed. Women in the Civil Rights Movement:
Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1990); Charles Payne, "Ella Baker and Models of
Social Change," sighs: Journal of Women in Culture and Socieey 14, no.
4 (1989): 885-899, and his book, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The
Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995), especially Chapter 3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

519 Scott, "On Seeing and Not Seeing," 8.

229

absence, their responses — in essence their subjectivity.
Althusser's suggestion that every text be read for the
"invisible" that appears within the world that theory
renders visible is instructive.520 Identifying the
mechanisms by which ideology, or any conscious
epistemology, renders one visible is therefore central to
unraveling the process by which the visible becomes
invisible. In the case of black women, certain power
relations have generated normalizing, and, by extension,
“disfiguring” images that have rendered them invisible.521
Twenty years after Bolin's 1939 judicial appointment
she remained the only black woman on the bench. She was
the singular representation of black women among a small
cadre of white women judges well into the 19605.522 But
this in and of itself does not explain historical
oversight. Actually, because of her singularity the

historical data were so abundant that it ought to have

 

520 As discussed in Judith Butler, Theories in Subjection: The Psychic
Life of Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) especially
Chapter 4.

521 For a full account of how history has produced "disfigured images"
of Black women, see Patricia Morton, Disfigured Images: The Historical
Assault on Afro-American Women (Westport: Praeger, 1991). In the case
of the African American woman, the literature is replete with treatises
of false imaginings. Based on stereotypes that were comfortable for
others, the African American woman, if not portrayed as "Mammy,"
"Sapphire," matriarch, servant or slave, remained invisible to the
historical eye. This phenomenon will not be dealt with here as it is
given ample treatment in the works of Michelle Wallace, Patricia
Morton, Cheryl Thurber, Sharon Harley and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Darlene
Clark Hine, Trudier Harris, and Robert Staples among others.

522 Alvin White, "Why Aren't There More Women Lawyers," The Afro-
American 21 February 1959, 1 and 7, Clipping File, Box 3, Bolin Papers.

 

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disrupted any normalizing of this early community of
professional women.

In assessing what looks like a deliberate avoidance of
Bolin’s dissidence within the NAACP, one has to consider
the fallout from the 1949-1950 incident within the context
of community solidarity. The black press had always worked
in concert with the NAACP and other civil rights
organizations "toward breaking down segregation and
injustice for the Negro, court case by court case, boycott
by boycott, and headline by headline,” explain Pride and

Wilson in their groundbreaking A History of the Black

 

Press. However, they add that with each succeeding victory
a price was paid, and sometimes "it was the pain of a race
member going 'outside' to air criticisms that most
preferred to keep within the ranks.”523

To be sure, philosophical disagreement among black
leaders was often bared on the pages of the black press.
The DuBois-Washington polemic stands as only one case
against any indictment of a monolithic black leadership.
Nevertheless, Bolin was chided by many, though applauded by
most, for criticizing the NAACP leadership in public. She
was even labeled a communist for being so outspoken. More
importantly, her going “outside to air criticisms” inspired
a series of editorials on the NAACP's accountability.

Shortly after her resignation was carried by several

 

523 Armistead S. Pride and Clint C. Wilson, II, A History of the Black
Press (Washington: Howard University Press, 1997), 222-223.

 

 

 

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newspapers, the Philadelphia Tribune editorialized that
'Bolin's resignation and her criticism of the NAACP "serve
to bring into focus the imperative need for a careful
review of the organization's policy and program."524 It
further called for a thorough analysis of the association's
structure, "from top to bottom, with no punches pulled, and
with the chips falling where they may."525

Standing firm against the solid male leadership of the
NAACP national office was not easy; neither was being
scapegoated for the near unraveling of the organization.
Might such difficulties have engendered a deliberate
forgetting on Bolin's part? In the only interview given,
she says very little about her involvement with the NAACP
(probably two sentences in an 80-page transcript), and
never mentions the public debate that occurred as a
result.526 Is her reluctance to "relive" those years with
the organization what historian Deborah Gray White calls,
"in part a manifestation of the black woman's perennial
concern with image," born of centuries of vilification?527

Or, can her avoidance be better understood through the

 

524 "The Future of the NAACP," Philadeiphia Tribune, Clipping File, Box
3, Bolin Papers.

525 Ibid.

526 At the behest of her nephew Lionel Bolin (her brother's son) this
1990 interview was conducted by Rudd in his presence. The author is
aware that much of what is said or not said is often directly related
to the format of an interview and the type of questions asked. Yet,
even as Bolin spoke about her association with the NAACP she never
fully addresses the incident surrounding her resignation.

527 "Mining the Forgotten: Manuscript Sources for Black Women's
History," Journal of American Histoey 74 (1987):

 

232

 

"culture of dissemblance;" the "self—imposed invisibility"
so often employed by black women, says Hine, to protect
their inner lives?528

As if intending to make sense of Judge Bolin's

invisibility in the historical record, a 1993 New York

 

Times article states that “Modest and matter-of—fact, Judge
Bolin has kept herself off the roster” of civil rights
trailblazers.529 So, could Bolin’s have been a simple case
of elusive subjectivity? Had she simply eluded historical
inquiry because of an “apparent passion for anonymity,"
that Scott finds so common among women?530 .And, if it is,
then what does it tell us?

In her essay, “Women's Liberation and Women's
Professions: Reconsidering the Past, Present, and Future,”
Geraldine Clifford fears that in their zeal to attack male
hegemony, feminist historians may have slighted the record
of women in fields identified by a domestic analogy, or

categorized as being within “women's sphere.”531 The Family

 

528 Darlene Clark Hine, "Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Woman:
Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance," in Virginia Bernhard, Betty
Brandon, Elizabeth Fox—Genovese and Theda Perdue, ed. Southern Women:
Histories and Identities (Columbia: University of Missouri Press,
1992), 177-189. The development of the culture of dissemblance may
have been influenced by rape and the threat of rape, but as Hine
suggests, dissemblance certainly facilitated mental survival in hostile
environments.

 

 

529 Margolick, B8 L (emphasis mine.)

530 Scott, "Making the Invisible Woman Visible: An Essay Review,"
Journal of Southern History 38, no. 4 (1972): 629-636. Scott offers no
explanation for this pattern among several women who appear in Notable
American Women.

 

 

531 Geraldine Joncich Clifford, "Women's Liberation and Women's
Professions: Reconstructing the Past, Present, and Future," in Women

233

 

Court, sometimes called the Domestic Relations Court, has
such as reputation, and is seen as a "female specialty"
area within the male-dominated judicial hierarchy. As
such, women in this "female specialty" area may not be seen
as truly revolutionary and therefore not celebrated equally
with their sisters in purely male-dominated arenas.

Bolin had penetrated the walls of a male-dominated
profession, but had Chosen to remain in a forum that
guarded the rights of women and children, society's two
most unprotected groups. But, could her record as a
judicial pioneer have been slighted because she remained in
the Family Court? Had her accomplishments as a Family
Court judge garnered less celebrity because, for many, the
office did not threaten to undo the fabric of male
hegemony?

Clifford warns that we would have erred in ignoring
these women because, as Florence Howe points out, the
struggles women waged to enter these fields are not yet
won, and ultimately affect the “thin tokendom of women
through[out] the nontraditional kingdoms.”532 Instead of
looking at the perscriptive nature of these fields,

Clifford challenges us to "think about how the opportunity,

 

 

and Higher Education in American History, ed. John Mack Faragher and
Florence Howe (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 165-182.

532 It is important to remember that many professions such as teaching,
nursing, and social work, along with other "female specialty" areas
were not always "traditionally-female" fields. Nursing, office and
sales work, and librarianship, according to Clifford, were male careers
long before they became "women's work," and women's way into these
fields were strewn with obstacles and recriminations. Clifford,
"Women's Liberation and Women's Professions," 175-178.

234

   

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the experience, the financial and psychic independence"
that these fields offered "affected women's lives and
consciousness.”533

Judge Bolin’s lived visibility stands in stark
contrast to any invisibility created by paradigms that
could not engage her subjectivity and, what Kenneth Harrow
calls, her “performativity.” What this study offers,
therefore, is a window for her discourse as activist,
pioneer, integrationist, feminist, and outspoken public

figure, to direct the restoration of her “performativity.”

 

533 Clifford, "Women's Liberation and Women's Professions, " 177.

235

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Manuscript Collections

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
NAACP Papers

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York
Jane Bolin Papers

Alumni Office, Williams College, Williamstown, MA
Gaius C. Bolin Folder, Alumni Records

Government Documents

 

African—American Justices on the State Courts of Last
Resort.
Williamsburg, VA: National Center for State Courts,
1996.

 

Newspapers and Periodicals

 

New York Amsterdam News
New York Times
Pittsburgh Courier

 

 

 

Journals

Crisis, NAACP, New York, 1939-1975.

Gender and History, 1980-1989.

Howard Law Journal, 1978-85.

Journal of Negro History, 1939-1970.

Journal of Southern History, 1972-1990.

Judicature, 1973.

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1980—89.

 

 

 

 

 

2%

 

 

 

Books

Auerbach, Jerold. Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social
Change in Modern America. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1976.

 

Bayor, Ronald H. Fiorello La Guardia: Ethnicity and Reform.
Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1993.

 

Bernhard, Virginia, et al., eds. Southern Women: Histories
And Identities. Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1992.

 

 

Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in
Subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.

 

 

Capeci, Dominic. The Harlem Riot of 1943. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1977.

 

Carter Dan. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969.

 

Cook, Beverly B., Leslie F. Goldstein, et al. Women in the
Judicial Process. American Political Science
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