The Need for Negro Lawyers

Abstract

The social justification for the Negro lawyer as such in the United States today is the service he can render the race as an interpreter and proponent of its rights and aspiration. There are enough white lawyers to care for the ordinary legal business of the country if that were all that was involved. But experience has proved that the average white lawyer, especially in the South, cannot be relied upon to wage an uncompromising fight for equal rights for Negroes. He has too many conflicting interests, and usually himself profits as an individual by that very exploitation of the Negro which, as a lawyer, he would be called upon to attack and destroy. A glance at Table I will show that Negro lawyers today are not sufficiently numerous or widely enough distributed to render the service desired. According to the 1930 census there were 1,230 Negro lawyers in the United States in 1930 as against 159,735 white lawyers. These census figures list a number of Negroes as lawyers who have never passed the bar or practised a single day. The census enumerators take their information from the individual concerned without any check or verification; and many persons claim a professional status or occupation for the illusion of social or personal prestige. For example, the 1930 census lists 98 Negro lawyers in the District of Columbia and 57 in the State of Virginia. It is exceedingly doubtful if more than 30 Negro lawyers can be found in the District who actually depend upon the practice of the law for a living, and in Virginia the number is closer to 15 than it is to 57. In all the census lists, 487 Negro lawyers out of 1,230 are located below the Mason-Dixon line. As a matter of fact there are not more than 100 Negro lawyers in the South devoting full time to practice: 100 Negro lawyers to care for the rights and interests of 9,000,000 Southern Negroes or approximately one Negro lawyer to every 90,000 Negroes. When the census figures for the individual states are examined, the picture is appalling. The census reports 4 Negro lawyers to the 944,834 Negroes in Alabama; 1 Negro lawyer to every 236,208 Alabama Negroes. The State of Alabama has an area of 51,998 square miles. If the 4 Negro lawyers were given cars and told to patrol the state like policemen, each lawyer would have a beat of 12,999 square miles. As a matter of fact the 4 Negro lawyers in 1930 were located 1 in Mobile, 2 in Birmingham, and 1 in Huntsville. The rest of the state was completely unprotected. The situation in Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana is almost as bad. Georgia has 14 Negro lawyers to her 1,071,125 Negro population; Mississippi 6 to her 1,009,718 Negroes; and Louisiana 8 to her 776,326 Negro population. Not that these states lack lawyers. Georgia for instance, has 2,799 white lawyers to her white population of 1,837,371; or 1 white lawyer to every 655 white