Cahn, Jean Camper (26 May 1935–2 January 1991), lawyer and advocate for the poor, was born Jean Beverly Camper in Baltimore, the daughter of physician John E. T. Camper, the founder of Baltimore’s first chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and hairdresser Florine Thompson....
Article
Cahn, Jean Camper (26 May 1935–2 January 1991), lawyer and advocate for the poor
Mitchell Robertson
Article
Kohler, Max James (1871-1934), jurist, historian, and Jewish communal worker
Eric L. Goldstein
Kohler, Max James (22 May 1871–24 July 1934), jurist, historian, and Jewish communal worker, was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Kaufmann Kohler and Johanna Einhorn. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Germany, and both his father and grandfather, David Einhorn, were leading rabbis of the Reform Movement in American Judaism. Upon the death of Kohler’s grandfather in 1879, his father assumed Einhorn’s pulpit at New York’s Congregation Beth El, and the family moved to that city. There he grew up in an atmosphere infused with a devotion to both religious values and scholarly pursuits. After completing high school, Kohler attended the College of the City of New York, where he won several important literary prizes. Following his graduation in 1890, he entered Columbia University, from which he received both M.A. (1891) and LL.B. (1893) degrees. He was admitted to the New York State bar in 1893 and became an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, resigning after four years to start a private law practice. In 1906 he married Winifred Lichtenauer, who died in 1922. No children resulted from the marriage....
Article
Sloan, Thomas Louis (14 May 1863–10 September 1940)
T. Robert Przeklasa
Sloan, Thomas Louis (14 May 1863–10 September 1940), Omaha tribal member, attorney, and Indian activist, was born to a mixed-race father, William E. Sloan, and a non-Indian mother, name unknown, in St. Louis, Missouri. At a young age he was orphaned and went to live with his paternal grandmother, Margaret Sloan, on the Omaha Indian Reservation in Nebraska. Margaret was the daughter of Michael Barada, a non-Indian man, and Taeglaha Haciendo, a woman of the Omaha tribe, making Thomas one-eighth Omaha. Reservation officials considered him a troublemaker and jailed him after he accused agents of cheating the tribe financially. He was later sent to the Hampton Institute in Virginia in 1886, where Captain Richard Henry Pratt had started the Indian boarding school system in 1878. Sloan excelled at Hampton and graduated as valedictorian in 1889. He decided not to attend Yale law school after graduation and returned to the Omaha Reservation....
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Speranza, Gino Carlo (1872-1927), immigration lawyer and author
George E. Pozzetta
Speranza, Gino Carlo (23 April 1872–12 July 1927), immigration lawyer and author, was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of Carlo Leonardo Speranza, a professor of Italian literature at Yale and Columbia Universities, and Adele Capetti. His parents were both natives of Verona, Italy, and the family returned there frequently. Speranza received part of his early education in Verona as well as in the public schools of New York City. He then studied at City College of New York, receiving a B.S. (1892) and an M.S. degree (1895). Speranza took legal training at New York University Law School, earning an LL.B. in 1894 and joining the New York and federal bars in 1895. In 1909 he married Florence Colgate, a Barnard College graduate (1895) and settlement house activist. They did not have children....
