July 22, 1939 – First African-American Woman, Jane Bolin, Appointed to Judicial Office in the U.S.

Jane Bolin, born in Poughkeepsie, NY of a mixed-race couple on April 11, 1908, was the first black 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 Department. She then became the first black woman to serve as a judge in the United States when she was sworn into the bench of the New York City Domestic Relations Court in 1939.

Bolin came from an activist family. As “The Root” recounts:

Activism ran in Bolin’s blood. . . . Her father, Gaius Charles Bolin Sr., the first black graduate of Williams College (1899) and the first black lawyer in Dutchess County, was elected president of the Dutchess County Bar Association in 1945. . . . After her mother died when Bolin was 8, her father raised her on a steady diet of civil rights and black community, and The Crisis was mandatory reading.”

Bolin was an outstanding student, graduating from high school at only 15 years of age. At age 16, Bolin wanted to enroll at Vassar, but black students were not accepted. She then went to Wellesley College in Massachusetts where she was one of only two black freshmen. She later reported being brutally ostracized and ridiculed by the student body despite her academic excellence; her years there “saddened and maddened” her. Still, she graduated with a BA in 1928 as one of the top students of her class and was officially recognized as a “Wellesley Scholar.”

©US Office of War Information, Jane Bolin (1942)

Nevertheless, a career adviser at Wellesley College tried to discourage her from applying to Yale Law School due to her race and gender. She ignored this advice, and was admitted to Yale Law School where she was the only black student, and one of only three women. She became the first black woman to receive a law degree from Yale in 1931 and passed the New York state bar examination in 1932.

Bolin practiced law in a variety of capacities before running, unsuccessfully, for the New York State Assembly as a Republican candidate in 1936. Despite the loss, securing the Republican candidacy boosted her reputation in New York politics.

On July 22, 1939, Mayor of New York City Fiorello La Guardia appointed 31-year-old Bolin as a judge of the Domestic Relations Court. For the next twenty years, she was the only black female judge in the country. She remained a judge of the court, renamed the Family Court in 1962, for 40 years, with her appointment being renewed three times, until she was required to retire at the age of 70.

Although Family Court was not especially high up in the judicial hierarchy, Bolin still tried to make a difference:

During her four decades on the bench, she consistently chipped away at the institutional racism that plagued New York City. . . . With persistence, Bolin succeeded in having religion and race removed as factors in court assignments. Ultimately, she had similar success in desegregating the city’s child-placement services that were dependent on public funds, although that fight would transpire over two of her terms, beginning in 1942 and ending in 1955.”

Throughout her life (she died in 2007 at the age of 98) Bolin was an activist for children’s rights and education. She was a legal advisor to the National Council of Negro Women and served on the boards of the NAACP, the National Urban League, and the Child Welfare League. She received honorary degrees from Tuskeegee Institute, Williams College, Hampton University, Western College for Women and Morgan State University.