Daughter of the Empire State: The Life of Judge Jane Bolin

Abstract

Jacqueline A. McLeod's Daughter of the Empire State is a biography of a figure whose life story should be of interest to the public and to scholars in many fields. The product of an interracial marriage, Jane Bolin moved through life as an African American even as her personal appearance prompted much commentary. Nonetheless, she seemed to fit comfortably into a familial tradition of black leadership that stretched back to free blacks in the antebellum era and forward to the northern branch of the civil rights movement. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1908, Bolin attended Wellesley College and, against the wishes of her lawyer father, chose to attend Yale Law School. After moving to New York City, she married a lawyer and staked out an ambitious career, struggling with the tensions between women's professional drive and familial responsibility in a manner that speaks to historical and presentist concerns. Bolin practiced law at a time when women were hardly welcome in the courtroom but were beginning to make inroads in fields identified as female specific. In 1939 she was appointed to the New York City Domestic Relations Court, making her the nation's first black female judge, where she would remain for the next four decades. Elected to the national board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp), she was forced out in 1949 and made headlines with her sharp criticism of the organization's hierarchy just as the naacp national office was insulating itself from charges of communist infiltration and consolidating its control over sometimes-fractious branches. Refusing to accept a ceremonial naacp position as compensation, Bolin continued to speak out on issues affecting women, African Americans, and juveniles for the rest of her career.