Violette Neatley Anderson and Edith Sampson both focused their careers on helping impoverished Black people in Chicago.
[5] In 1897, Lutie Lytle became the first Black woman faculty member of a law school when she joined Central Tennessee College.
[10] With the onset of World War II, more Black women gained the opportunity to attend law school.
[3] In a society where Black women were considered intellectually inferior, Motley's competence was frequently questioned.
Motley was asked to recuse herself from a gender-discrimination case against Sullivan & Cromwell in New York on the grounds that her identity as a Black woman gave her a conflict of interest.
Although her argument treated race and gender as mutually exclusive entities, Marray's work set the stage for the concept of intersectionality.
[3] Increased inclusion of Black women in legal scholarship in the 1980s contributed to the rise of research on the intersection of the two identities.
The story of Anita Hill, another Black female lawyer, highlights aspects of the intersectionality approach.
[16] In 2022, Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black woman to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
[18] In 2019, Tsedale M. Melaku's book, You Don't Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gendered Racism was published by Rowman & Littlefield.
Scholars argue that while the number of Black women in law is increasing, their opportunities for advancement remain limited.
[1] Tsedale M. Melaku argues in her book that Black women face obstacles when trying to network and form social relationships, and this affects their career advancement.
Melaku describes another challenge for Black women in legal professions called "the inclusion tax concept."
Black women must use more time, money, and energy to conform to the workplace standards set by white men.
Means argues that when evaluating candidates for judicial appointments, the American Bar Association (ABA) is far more likely to give white people and men higher ratings, indicating that they are more qualified (even if that it is not actually true).
Even when they make it to the bench, they face discrimination in the form of “having their legitimacy, authority, and competence questioned.” In line with the story of Constance Baker Motley, many Black women are asked to recuse themselves from cases under claims that their identity as Black women will reduce their ability to be impartial.
[20] Scholars claim that despite major advancements, Black women remain heavily sidelined in legal professions.