Bazelon, David Lionel (3 September 1909–19 February 1993), lawyer and United States Circuit Court judge, was born in Superior, Wisconsin, the son of Israel Bazelon, a shopkeeper, and Lena Bazelon. Bazleon was the youngest of nine children. Raised in poverty, his family’s already precarious financial situation was exacerbated by his father’s death when Bazelon was two years old. In search of increased economic opportunity, the family then moved to Chicago. Bazelon attended the University of Illinois, and then transferred to Northwestern University where he received his law degree in ...
Article
Bazelon, David Lionel (3 September 1909–19 February 1993), lawyer and United States Circuit Court judge
Reuel E. Schiller
Article
Bolin, Jane Matilda (11 April 1908–8 January 2007), attorney, judge, and civil rights activist
Jacqueline McLeod
Bolin, Jane Matilda (11 April 1908–8 January 2007), attorney, judge, and civil rights activist, was born in Poughkeepsie, New York to Matilda Emery Bolin and Gaius Charles Bolin. Matilda Emery immigrated with her parents to the United States from Northern Ireland and settled in Poughkeepsie, where she later met and married Gaius Charles Bolin, who had deeper roots in New York as a descendant of a long line of free Duchess County Black residents. The Bolins had lived in and around Poughkeepsie for nearly two hundred years and left an impressive legacy of civil rights protest upon which Jane Bolin built. Her grandfather, Abram Bolin, was an activist and reformer, who in ...
Article
Doar, John Michael (3 Dec. 1921–11 Nov. 2014), lawyer and federal official
Philip A. Goduti Jr.
Doar, John Michael (3 Dec. 1921–11 Nov. 2014), lawyer and federal official, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to William and Mae Doar. His father was a lawyer and his mother a teacher. He grew up in New Richmond, Wisconsin and attended St. Paul Academy, graduating in ...
Article
Fosdick, Raymond Blaine (09 June 1883–18 July 1972)
Laura A. Miller
Fosdick, Raymond Blaine (09 June 1883–18 July 1972), lawyer, author, and foundation president, was born in Buffalo, New York to Frank Fosdick, a teacher and school principal, and Amie Weaver. Fosdick’s childhood was a comfortable and content one, if somewhat constrained by his parents’ financial situation, which he described as “always precarious and frequently disastrous.” His parents sought to foster in their children a love of learning, books, and music, as well as a strong devotion to the Baptist faith. They also encouraged intellectual discussion and debate, which sometimes conflicted with Fosdick’s rigid religious upbringing. Out of the family’s Sunday dinner discussions, he recalled developing a growing “conviction . . . that moral values and ideals do not require the abdication of intelligence and critical judgment.” This early realization would profoundly shape Fosdick’s career in public and philanthropic service....
Article
Goodwin, Richard Naradhoff (7 December 1931–20 May 2018), lawyer, presidential adviser, speechwriter, author
Philip A. Goduti
Goodwin, Richard Naradhoff (7 December 1931–20 May 2018), lawyer, presidential adviser, speechwriter, author, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Joseph Goodwin, a salesperson and engineer, and Belle Fisher. Goodwin spent part of his childhood in Maryland. He recalled in his memoir, “I was frequently harassed and taunted” for being Jewish and “occasionally beaten up by older boys.” He returned to Massachusetts and attended Brookline High School....
Article
Grimké, Thomas Smith (26 September 1786–12 October 1834)
Louise W. Knight
Grimké, Thomas Smith (26 September 1786–12 October 1834), lawyer, educational and peace reformer, politician, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the second son of John Faucheraud Grimké and Mary Smith Grimké. John Grimké, a native Charlestonian of French Huguenot stock, was educated at the University of Cambridge, an officer in the American Revolution, and head justice of the state’s Court of Appeals. Mary Grimké, a descendant of an English landgrave, the state’s founding aristocracy, and the famous Irish rebel leader Rory O’Moore, was a co-founder of Charleston’s female benevolent society. Other children included ...
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Grimké, Thomas Smith (26 September 1786–12 October 1834)
In
Thomas Smith Grimké. Portrait of Thomas Smith Grimké (1786-1834). Oil on canvas. Portrait by Abraham G.D. Tuthill. Courtesy of Miami University Art Museum, Oxford, Ohio.
Article
Hunter, Howard William (14 Nov.1907–3 Mar. 1995), attorney and fourteenth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS)
Stephen C. Taysom
Hunter, Howard William (14 Nov.1907–3 Mar. 1995), attorney and fourteenth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), was born in Boise, Idaho, to John William Hunter and Nellie Marie Rasmussen. His father worked as a motorman for the streetcar and interurban trolley system operated by the Boise Valley Traction Company. Hunter was raised in a working-class environment, and held many jobs as a child and adolescent. Unlike most LDS leaders, Hunter was not from a prominent Utah family, and in fact his father was not involved with the LDS church when Hunter was a child. Furthermore, Hunter, unlike most LDS church presidents, was not baptized at the age of eight (he was not baptized until he was twelve), and never served a full-time mission for the LDS church as a young man...
Article
Leffingwell, Russell C. (10 Sept. 1878–2 Oct. 1960), lawyer, financier, and federal government official
William Weisberger
Leffingwell, Russell C. (10 Sept. 1878–2 Oct. 1960), lawyer, financier, and federal government official, was born Russell Cornell Leffingwell in New York City to Mary Cornell Leffingwell and Charles Russell Leffingwell. Charles Leffingwell, whose ancestors played a major role in the development of colonial and revolutionary Connecticut, operated his wife’s family’s lucrative iron business. He sent his son to fine private schools, first to Yonkers Military Academy and then to New York City’s Halsey School, where he graduated in ...
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Leffingwell, Russell C. (10 Sept. 1878–2 Oct. 1960)
Maker: unknown
Portrait of Russell C. Leffingwell, 1918–1920, by unknown photographer
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [LC-DIG-npcc-01031]
Article
Lewis, Cornelia “Nell” Battle (28 May 1893–26 Nov. 1956), journalist, lawyer, and educator
Elizabeth Gillespie McRae
Lewis, Cornelia “Nell” Battle (28 May 1893–26 Nov. 1956), journalist, lawyer, and educator, was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, to Richard Henry Lewis, a physician, and his second wife, Mary Gordon Lewis of Albemarle County, Virginia. Nell (as she was always known) was named after Dr. Lewis’s first wife, and raised by his third, Annie Blackwell, along with three older half-brothers and a half-sister. Educated at St. Mary’s School in Raleigh, she excelled at basketball, debating, and writing and served as the editor of the school’s annual publication and monthly magazine, both named ...
Article
Mitchell, Juanita Jackson (2 January 1913–7 July 1992), civil rights activist and lawyer
Thomas L. Bynum and Torren L. Gatson
Mitchell, Juanita Jackson (2 January 1913–7 July 1992), civil rights activist and lawyer, was born to Lillie Carroll Jackson, a schoolteacher, and Kieffer Albert Jackson, a traveling salesman, in Hot Springs, Arkansas. As the daughter of civil rights activists, Jackson was greatly influenced by her parents’ avocation of social justice and racial equality. By the 1920s the family relocated to Baltimore, Maryland. Jackson received her early education in the Baltimore public schools. After graduating from Fredrick Douglass High School in ...
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Mitchell, Juanita Jackson (2 January 1913–7 July 1992)
Maker: Britton & Patterson
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Juanita Jackson Mitchell (2 January 1913–7 July 1992), with the Scottsboro Boys, by Britton & Patterson, 1936 [fourth from left]
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquired through the generosity of Elizabeth Ann Hylton
Article
Murphey, Archibald Debow (01 January 1777?–01 February 1832)
George W. Houston
Murphey, Archibald Debow (01 January 1777?–01 February 1832), lawyer and North Carolina state senator, was born in Caswell County in north-central North Carolina, one of the seven children of Archibald Murphey, an army officer and county clerk, and Jane Debow. Murphey attended David Caldwell’s academy in Guilford County, then entered the University of North Carolina, from which he graduated with highest distinction in 1799. He taught at the university for two years while studying law, and in 1801 he established a law practice in Hillsborough, the county seat of Orange County. In that same year he married Jane Armistead Scott. They had five children, the last born in 1812....
Article
Pilpel, Harriet Fleischl (02 December 1911–23 April 1991)
Leigh Ann Wheeler
Pilpel, Harriet Fleischl (02 December 1911–23 April 1991), civil liberties lawyer and activist, was born Harriet F. Fleischl to former schoolteacher Ethel Loewy and Julius Fleischl, a self-educated businessman who worked for his family’s dairy and poultry business. Harriet grew up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in the Bronx where she attended Evander Childs High School, served as captain of the debate team, and became interested in public affairs. The eldest of three children—all daughters—Harriet enjoyed a special relationship with her father, who expected her intellectual and academic achievements to equal those of her most accomplished male peers....
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....
Article
Sorensen, Theodore Chaikin (8 May 1928–31 Oct. 2010), lawyer, presidential advisor, and speechwriter
Philip A. Goduti Jr.
Sorensen, Theodore Chaikin (8 May 1928–31 Oct. 2010), lawyer, presidential advisor, and speechwriter, was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, to Christian A. Sorensen, a lawyer who also served as attorney general for the state of Nebraska from 1929 to 1933, and Annis Chaikin, a social worker. Christian Sorensen was influenced by the progressive wing of the Republican Party and named his son after President ...
Article
Storey, Moorfield (19 Mar. 1845–24 Oct. 1929), civil rights attorney and anti-imperialist activist
Mark Robert Schneider
Storey, Moorfield (19 Mar. 1845–24 Oct. 1929), civil rights attorney and anti-imperialist activist, was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, to attorney Charles Storey and Elizabeth Eaton Storey, Boston Brahmin parents of declining wealth and Conscience Whig political persuasions. Storey attended Harvard College, graduating in ...
Article
Strauss, Robert S. (19 Oct. 1918–19 Mar. 2014), politician, lawyer, and ambassador
Kathryn McGarr
Strauss, Robert S. (19 Oct. 1918–19 Mar. 2014), politician, lawyer, and ambassador, was born Robert Schwarz Strauss in Lockhart, Texas, the elder son of Edith Schwarz Strauss, a native Texan of German-Jewish descent, and Charles H. Strauss, who had emigrated from Germany several years earlier. Soon after Robert’s birth the family moved to West Texas, settling in Stamford, a town of three thousand people, where his parents owned a dry goods store in the town square. The hard-working Edith, who bore the brunt of work at the store and at home, played a significant role in encouraging Robert’s ambitions beyond West Texas. She convinced her son, a poor student who earned admission to the University of Texas in ...
