African-American legal pioneers

Listen to this article

African Americans have been practicing law in Wisconsin for more that 115 years. William T. Green, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1892, is believed to have been the state’s first black lawyer.

By 1922 when Mabel Watson Raimey began taking night courses at Marquette University Law School, it was still rare for a person of African dissent to join the profession and unheard of for a black woman to take that step.

Since that time, the African-American community has seen many firsts in Wisconsin’s legal community from the appointment of Vel Phillips as the state’s first black judge in 1971 to Louis B. Butler Jr.’s appointment to the state Supreme Court in 2004.

Every pioneer who has taken steps to move beyond the barriers of the day has a unique story to share. Two of those stories are summarized on the next page.

As the great Roman orator, Cicero, noted, looking back at history provides illumination and guidance for us today. Justice Butler agrees.

“I do think it is important to look back,” Butler said during an interview. “Over time, sometimes, people lose touch with the past. And if you haven’t had to live through difficult periods as people did in the past, there’s kind of a disconnect.”

It is easy to take for granted the fact that we’ve progressed so far and assume that things have always been this way, he said.

“I think it’s important to recognize people who have been trailblazers, who have gone out and worked hard to achieve success in the past,” he continued. “We have wonderful role models that have done so.”

Joseph A. Ranney, an attorney at DeWitt Ross & Stevens S.C., has written a history of the state’s legal system. During an interview, he also stressed the importance of looking back at those stories.

“In order to understand how far we have come, but also to understand how far we still have to go, it’s important to see what we’ve done in the past and be mindful of what we have done right and what we could have done better,” Ranney said.

Phillips noted that we are working toward a day when no one keeps track of firsts any more, but we have not reached that point yet. The stories of those early pioneers still have much to teach us.

“It shows courage,” she said. “It shows a breakthrough of barriers.”

Green and Raimey’s stories are two examples of that spirit.

William T. Green University of Wisconsin Law School, 1892

William T. Green has the distinction of being the first African American to graduate from a Wisconsin law school and he is believed to be the first black lawyer to practice law in the state. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1892, he set up a law practice in Milwaukee.

He made a number of significant contributions toward conditions of minorities in Wisconsin at the turn of the century. Green was involved in drafting the state’s first civil rights legislation and he was active in Milwaukee’s emerging African-American community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Limited accounts of his activities have been recorded in two different books — “Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat” by Joe William Trotter Jr. and “History of Wisconsin’s Legal System” by Joseph A. Ranney.

Few Professionals

In his book, Trotter noted that by 1910, one year before Green died, African Americans in Milwaukee filled few professional positions, according to the U.S. Census, which identified 14 black musicians and music teachers, four lawyers and four physicians.

“Only one black lawyer, William T. Green, one dentist, Dr. Clifton A. Johnson, and one physician, Dr. Allen L. Herron, catering primarily to white clients, consistently stood out during the period. All of these men attracted substantial white clientele, while serving blacks as well,” Trotter wrote.

Several incidents in 1889 at Milwaukee’s Bijou Theater launched a lawsuit and chain of events that culminated in the creation of Wisconsin’s first civil rights statute. A black railway porter was refused seating with white patrons and was ushered to segregated seating. In another instance, a black patron was simply denied access to the theater.

“William T. Green, Milwaukee’s first black lawyer, and some white supporters brought suit on their behalf and launched a movement in the legislature and in the courts to prevent such incidents in the future,” Ranney wrote.

Circuit Judge Daniel Johnson held the theater owner liable and determined that people could not be denied access to public accommodations based on race, color, or prior servitude.

Civil Rights Legislation

During that same time period, Green was involved in T. Thomas Fortune’s Afro-American League, a national black civil rights group. He was one of two delegates to the group’s 1890 Chicago convention.

“Upon their return, Green drafted a comprehensive civil rights bill for the state,” Trotter wrote. “The bill specified that places of accommodation and amusement be open to all regardless of race.”

Violators were subject to a misdemeanor and fines of $25- $500 and/or imprisonment up to one year. The courts upheld the law, but it was only utilized when those who had been discriminated against stood up for their rights.

“Although the courts enforced the law when Wisconsin blacks invoked it, the law did little to ameliorate popular prejudices against blacks,” Ranney wrote.

The law was not utilized as much as it should have been. In a telephone interview Ranney said, “It was a situation where if someone had the determination and the financial resources to pursue a claim under the law, the courts would generally give him a fair shake.

“There are a couple of published decisions in the late 1800s where the Supreme Court actually enforced the law. But I suspect the reality was that most black Wisconsinites when they were discriminated against didn’t have the time or the money to pursue it.”

Green was heavily involved in the African-American community. Trotter noted that during the turn of the century, black fraternal organizations were growing in terms of importance in the African-American community in Milwaukee. By 1905, there were eight organizations and Green held offices in half of them.

“Fraternal organizations played a particularly useful role in providing members sickness, disability, and burial benefits as well as social, cultural and entertainment activities,” Trotter noted.

When Green died in 1911, he left the city without a practicing black attorney. Two years later George DeReef, a 1905 graduate of Howard University’s law program, came to Milwaukee after practicing in Washington D.C. According to Trotter, he “established an office in space formerly occupied by W.T. Green at 217-18 Empire Building.”

He also took up the mantle and left his mark on the social, economic and political life of blacks during the early 20th century.

Mabel Watson Raimey Marquette University Law School, 1927

When Mabel Watson Raimey graduated with her law degree from Marquette University Law School in 1927 there were few African-American men practicing law, few white women in that field and no African-American women practicing in Wisconsin. She broke that barrier in the state.

In fact, it was 24 year before the next black woman lawyer, Vel Phillips, graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Raimey had to navigate around discrimination that faced her on two fronts to achieve her goal of practicing law. Having lost a job early in life due to racial discrimination, at times she relied on her light complexion and the fact that whites did not always recognize her African ancestry to move forward.

Marquette Professor Phoebe Weaver Williams chronicled some of the challenges Raimey faced in a Marquette Law Review article entitled “A Black Woman’s Voice: The Story of Mabel Raimey, ‘Shero.’”

Looking at family documents dating back to 1822, Weaver noted the importance of education to Raimey’s ancestors. In fact her great great grandmother, Molly, the daughter of a West African chief, was lured away from her homeland with the promise of an education. That false promise resulted in her enslavement.

Raimey’s great grandfather and great grandmother were both free born. Although they moved around, eventually, they settled in Milwaukee in 1851. Weaver noted that Raimey’s family enrolled her in kindergarten in 1901 reflecting the family’s commitment to education.

“A talented student, she graduated from West Division High School at the age of [14],” Weaver wrote.

Facing Discrimination

Early on, she had wanted to practice medicine, but when she consulted the family physician to ask about that course of study, he discouraged her, indicating it was too difficult for a woman to pursue. It was an early encounter with discrimination based on her sex.

Instead, she went to the University of Wisconsin and in 1918 earned a bachelor’s degree in English. She decided to share her education with others and obtained a job teaching in the Milwaukee Public Schools. Once again, she ran into discrimination, this time based on her race. She only held the job for three days.

“Once school administrators ‘discovered’ she was [b]lack they dismissed her,” Weaver wrote. “School officials had initially mistaken Miss Raimey for a [w]hite woman, but upon discovery of her African ancestry, they quickly corrected their ‘mistake.’”

Weaver observed that Raimey’s overt experience with racism had a lasting effect on her, which was visible even after she successfully graduated from Marquette Law School and developed a successful practice. She did not actively promote her African ancestry.

After losing her teaching position, Raimey eventually became a legal secretary. That sparked an interest in the law and in 1922 she began taking night courses at Marquette.

She was one of only five women taking night courses at the law school and she was the only black student, according to Weaver.

A Matter of Race

Given Raimey’s earlier experience with the public school officials, she was very cautious about disclosing her race.

Williams wrote, “When questioned during interviews about how officials at Marquette Law School responded to her race, she candidly responded ‘[n]obody asked me’ and ‘I never told.’”

When she graduated in 1927, Raimey continued as a legal secretary where she had worked during law school. Eventually she began to practice law and represented all races of people in probate and business matters.

“In her words, she ‘strived to serve all people in a fair and just manner regardless of economic ability,’” Weaver wrote.

Vel Phillips, who graduated from the UW Law School in 1951, observed that even in the 1950s Raimey was not actively disclosing her race.

“I don’t think she ever told anyone, but people just assumed that she was Caucasian and she didn’t say anything,” Phillips said in a telephone interview.

In time, Phillips noted, Raimey began to acknowledge and embrace her role as a pioneer. Raimey was involved in the Milwaukee Urban League’s board for 25 years, was a member of the YWCA board and helped found the Milwaukee Northside YWCA, which served primarily blacks. She also founded the Milwaukee graduate chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

“During interviews and speeches she repeatedly admonished younger women to set high goals, and ‘never us[e] sex or race as an excuse not to attain these goals,’” Weaver wrote.

Her law practice ended in 1972 when she suffered a stroke in the bathtub, where she survived for five days until she was rescued by friends. She died in 1986.

1892 – William T. Green graduates from University of Wisconsin Law School. He becomes Wisconsin’s first black lawyer.

1927 – Mabel Watson Raimey graduates from Marquette University Law School. She is the state’s first black female lawyer.

1971 – Gov. Patrick Lucey appoints Vel Phillips to the Milwaukee County bench. She is Wisconsin’s first black judge.

1971 – Wisconsin Black Lawyers Association is incorporated. Lloyd Barbee becomes the group’s first president.

1973 – Gov. Patrick Lucey appoints Harold Jackson, Milwaukee’s first black assistant district attorney, to the bench. He becomes the state’s first black judge to remain on the bench with an election.

1975 – Charles N. Clevert Jr. becomes Wisconsin’s first black assistant U.S. attorney.

1977 – Charles N. Clevert Jr. is appointed U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge.

1988 – Wisconsin Association of African-American Lawyers is organized.

1996 – Judge Charles N. Clevert Jr. is appointed to the U.S. District Court.

1999 – Carl Ashley becomes the first black elected to the circuit court bench without having been appointed.

2003 – Gov. Jim Doyle appoints Judge Paul B. Higginbotham to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.

2003 – Michelle Behnke wins election as president-elect of the State Bar of Wisconsin.

2004 – Gov. Jim Doyle appoints Judge Louis B. Butler Jr. to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

2004 – Michelle Behnke becomes the first black president of the State Bar of Wisconsin.

2005 – Judge Paul B. Higginbotham retains his seat on the court of appeals with an election.