Aspiring Black attorney admitted to Maryland Bar 166 years after rejection due to his race
Nearly 166 years after he was first rejected, due to his race, Edward Garrison Draper has been admitted to the Maryland Bar.
When Draper presented himself as a candidate to practice law in 1857, a Baltimore judge found that he was “qualified in all respects” — except that he was not white. He therefore did not grant him admission, making Draper the earliest known person in Maryland to be denied acceptance to the bar based solely on his race.
The Supreme Court of Maryland on Thursday attempted to right that wrong by holding a special session to posthumously admit Draper to practice law in the state.
“Maryland was not at the forefront of welcoming Black applicants to the legal profession,” said former appellate Justice John G. Browning, of Texas, one of the people behind the petition calling for Draper’s admission. “But by granting posthumous bar admission to Edward Garrison Draper, this court places itself and places Maryland in the vanguard of restorative justice and demonstrates conclusively that justice delayed may not be justice denied.”
Justice Shirley M. Watts, of the Maryland Supreme Court, said Draper’s posthumous admission would be the state’s first. People “can only imagine” the legal career that Draper may have had, she said, and what contributions he could have made. Perhaps, Watts continued, had he become Maryland’s first Black attorney in 1857, “some of the legal battles for civil rights that were fought later could’ve been fought sooner.”
“We will never know,” Watts said.
Long overdue as his admission is, Watts added, it is an indication of “just how far our society and the legal profession have come.”
Judge Z. Collins Lee, the judge who evaluated Draper in 1857, wrote in a certificate that he was “most intelligent and well informed in his answers.” The Dartmouth graduate would be qualified, Lee said, “if he was a free white Citizen of this State,” according to a transcription in a petition for Draper’s posthumous bar admission.
The filing was submitted at the request of the Supreme Court by Browning, Maryland attorney Domonique Flowers and José Anderson, a University of Baltimore School of Law professor.
The three described that Draper, who wanted to salvage his attempt to become a lawyer, told Lee he hoped to emigrate to Liberia and become a lawyer. Lee then drafted the certificate, which added that it was furnished to Draper by Lee “with a view to promote his establishment and success in Liberia at the Bar there.” Lee, according to the trio’s research, was a first cousin of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and himself a slave owner.
Draper emigrated six days later but died within a year of his arrival from tuberculosis.
The trio’s filing goes on to note that Maryland long resisted legal challenges to admitting Black lawyers or revising its racially restrictive statute for admission.
Even as states like Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Virginia admitted their first Black attorneys in the 1860s and 1870s, Maryland’s bar remained all white until 1885, according to a law review article by Browning. The state did not repeal its statute until 1888.
A posthumous admission is “far more” than symbolic, Browning, Flowers and Anderson argued.
Rather, it is “an important step in acknowledging the racial injustices of the past that still resonate in the present,” the petition for Draper’s admission said.
“Edward Garrison Draper met or exceeded all lawful requirements for admission to the Maryland bar in 1857, proving the lie of Chief Justice Roger Taney’s infamous characterization earlier that same year of Black men and women as ‘beings of inferior order’ with ‘no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” it continued.
A handful of states have already granted posthumous bar admission to individuals rejected on racial grounds. The Washington Supreme Court, for instance, granted posthumous admission in 2001 to Takuji Yamashita, who was denied admission due to laws that officials interpreted as precluding Asian immigrants from becoming citizens, a requirement to practice law. More recently, Texas posthumously admitted J.H. Williams, a Black applicant, due to racist circumstances behind his denial.
Justice Angela M. Eaves, at Thursday’s Maryland Supreme Court special session, referenced Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards’ remarks in pardoning Homer A. Plessy, of Plessy v. Ferguson, for a 125-year-old conviction for refusing to sit in the “colored” car. Edwards had remarked, “No matter is ever settled until it is settled right.”
“The time for settling this matter is now,” Eaves said of Draper. “There is no expiration for doing the right thing. Even when more than a century and a half has gone by.”
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