February 1, 1865 – John Rock Becomes 1st Black Attorney Admitted to Argue in the US Supreme Court

On the same day that the US Congress approved the 13th Amendment ending slavery, Charles Sumner introduced a motion to admit Boston attorney John Rock to argue cases before the US Supreme Court.

Rock, born in New Jersey in 1825 to free Black parents, taught school as an adult and also studied medicine as an assistant to white doctors. He was denied admission to medical school in 1848 because of his race, however, and moved into the dentistry field in 1849.

John Rock, via Wikipedia

Eventually he was admitted to the American Medical College and graduated with a medical degree in 1852. He was thus one of the first Blacks to receive a medical degree from a regular medical school, and by now had learned the professions of teacher, dentist and doctor; he was just twenty-seven years old. He and his wife moved to Boston, where he established a successful practice that offered free services to fugitive slaves. He also lectured on abolition and enfranchisement for free Blacks.

Poor health forced Rock to give up his medical practice in 1859 so he decided to pursue a career in law. In 1861, he was one of the first African Americans admitted to the Massachusetts Bar; in September of that year, he was appointed a Justice of the Peace for Boston and Suffolk County, Massachusetts.

On February 1, 1865, this day in history, Senator Charles Sumner introduced a motion at the U.S. Supreme Court; when it passed that same day, John S. Rock became the first African American admitted to practice there.

According to Clarence G. Contee, writing for the Supreme Court Historical Society, Rock had previously written to Senator Sumner in mid-1864 to aid his quest, but Sumner told him that nothing could be done as long as Roger B. Taney was Chief Justice. After Taney died on October 12, 1864 and President Lincoln in December appointed Salmon P. Chase of Ohio – an antislavery champion – as Chief Justice, Sumner was able to convince Chase to admit Rock on February 1, 1865. Contee writes:

Harper’s Weekly of February 25, 1865, carried a photograph of Rock, and it held that his admission to the bar of the Supreme Court, together with the Thirteenth Amendment, then in the process of ratification, tolled the end of the Dred Scott decision and its doctrines and opened a new day for all black Americans. . . . . Harper’s Weekly understood the significance of the admission of Rock: ‘The Supreme Court of the United States has taken one of a race crushed down to the earth with its own solemn sanction, has taken one who merely by the chances of birth was not himself a slave, and has placed him not indeed in marble, but upon `the enduring pedestal’ of an honorable citizenship.’”

Rock’s declining health prevented him from fully exercising this hallmark privilege. He died of tuberculosis in December 1866 at age 41.