Law Office of Hugh E Reid, Esq

Black History Trans-formative Justice Day 4: Jane Bolin, (1908 to 2007) Jane Bolin was the first African American woman to serve as a judge in this country. She was sworn to the bench in 1939 in New York City. She served on the Family Court bench for four decades, advocating for children and families. She was also the first African American woman to graduate from Yale Law School, the first to join the New York City Bar Association and the first to join the New York City Law D...epartment Jane Matilda Bolin was born on April 11, 1908, in Poughkeepsie. N.Y. Her father, Gaius C. Bolin, was the son of an American Indian woman and an African-American man. Her mother, the former Matilda Emery, was a white Englishwoman. Jane was one of four children of Gaius Bolin, the first African American graduate of Williams College who practiced law in Poughkeepsie. Mr. Bolin,, had his own legal practice and was president of the Dutchess County Bar Association. His daughter grew up enamored of his shelves of leather-bound books on the law. But her comfortable girlhood was profoundly shaken by articles and pictures of lynchings in Crisis magazine, the official publication of the N.A.A.C.P. It is easy to imagine how a young, protected child who sees portrayals of brutality is forever scarred and becomes determined to contribute in her own small way to social justice, she wrote in a letter in anticipation of her retirement in December 1978. She attended Wellesley College, where she was one of two black freshmen. They were assigned to the same room in a family’s apartment off campus, the first instance of many episodes of discrimination she said she encountered there. Bolin graduated with honors in 1928. In 1931, she was the first Black woman to attend and graduate Yale Law School. Judge Bolin was the first black woman to join the New York City Bar Association, and the first to work in the office of the New York City corporation counsel, the city’s legal department. After marriage to Ralph E. Mizelle and a successful law career, she ran unsuccessfully as the Republican candidate for New York’s seventeenth district state assembly seat. In 1937, Bolin was appointed assistant cor

Black History Trans-formative Justice Day 3: Charles Hamilton Houston (1895 1950) Charles Hamilton Houston conceived of and led the legal strategy leading to the end of legalized racial segregation in the United States. He and those he taught and mentored laid the legal groundwork through thought and action that ultimately led to 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that made racial segregation in public primary and secondary schools unconstitutio...nal. He died four years before full fruition of his work to end "separate but equal" as a valid constitutional principle. Houston not only participated in effecting the change, but was the inspiration and mentor to Thurgood Marshall, James Nabrit, Spottswood Robinson, A. Leon Higginbotham, Robert Carter, William Hastie and many others who carried on the battle and remains an inspiration to those working for social justice today. Houston was born in Washington, D.C., to a middle-class family who lived in the Striver section. His father William Le Pré Houston, the son of a former slave, had become an attorney and practiced in the capital for more than four decades. Charles' mother, Mary (née Hamilton) Houston, worked as a seamstress. Houston attended segregated local schools, graduating from the academic (college preparatory) Dunbar High School at the age of 15. He studied at Amherst College beginning in 1911, was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, and graduated from as one of six valedictorians from Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1915. He only black student in his class. He then taught at Howard University in Washington, D.C., for two years until the onset of World War I. Houston enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in Europe in World War I as a second lieutenant in field artillery. As a result of some of his experiences in the segregated and racist army, Houston decided that he needed to become an advocate to enforce the legal rights of the oppressed. In pursuit of this, following his honorable discharge from the army in 1919, Houston enrolled at Harvard Law School from which he earned his Bachelor of Laws in 1922 and a doctorate in 1923. Houston was a stellar student and

Happy Black History Month: Day 2 "Young man- Young man- Your arms's are too short to box with God. " James Weldon Johnson was an early civil rights activist, writer, composer, politician, US diplomat, educator, lawyer, a leader of the NAACP, and a leading figure in the creation and development of the Harlem Renaissance. He was the first African American to pass the Florida Bar. He was also a publisher.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH DAY 1 John Sweat Rock (1825-1866)

In honor of Black History Month, the Law office of Hugh E Reid, Esq. is pleased to highlight influential legal minds who have shaped the socio-political and racial landscape of America.

https://www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org//new-york-evict

LIVE: US House votes on historic bill that would decriminalize cannabis and clear the way to erase nonviolent federal marijuana convictions. https://nbcnews.to/3lIkUSj

https://queenseagle.com//ex-queens-prosecutor-who-used-rac