The Development of the Black Bar

This article seeks to trace a certain pattern which exists, or appears to exist, within the history of black lawyers in America. Their story is relatively short, for American black lawyers have been part of our times for only 129 years. However, black lawyers in America, insofar as they constitute a "black bar," should not be considered exclusively as a group, generating certain patterns. Whatever the term "black bar" may mean, it can be defined adequately only in terms of every individual black lawyer. There have been periods in American history when there were too few black lawyers for any sort of group to be assembled at all. Because so distinct and limited a minority can have no significant power or influence, it is encouraging that the sheer numerical characteristic of black lawyers has increased. In 1844 there was one; in 1973 there are more than four thousand. But however many more are needed, and however influential the "black bar" may become, it is perhaps to our benefit that we are forced to consider certain individuals, isolated though they often were, as the total representation of the black legal profession. Those men and women served to maintain a tradition throughout some very bad times. Today, they serve to remind us that black lawyers, however constituted, defined, or studied, are nothing if not individuals, men and women of distinctive color, creed, and characteristic, and ultimately their own men and women, not those of any of their associations.