Category
page 120th-century African-American lawyers
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president. Obama previously served as a U.S. senator representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
Kamala Harris
Vice President of the United States from 2021 to 2025
Michelle Obama
lawyer and former First Lady of the United States (2009-2017)
Clarence Thomas
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 1991
Ketanji Brown Jackson
American lawyer and jurist (born 1970)
Thurgood Marshall
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 to 1991 (1908–1993)
Eric Holder
United States Attorney General from 2009 to 2015
Barbara Jordan
American politician (1936-1996)
Edward Brooke
American politician from Massachusetts (1919–2015)
Loretta Lynch
American attorney (born 1959)
Anita Hill
American law professor; witness in Clarence Thomas controversy
Sheila Jackson Lee
American lawyer and politician (1950–2024)
Lori Lightfoot
Mayor of Chicago from 2019 to 2023
Florynce Kennedy
American activist
Roland Burris
American politician and attorney
Pauli Murray
American writer, activist, lawyer and Episcopal priest (1910-1985)
Bryan Stevenson
American lawyer, social reformer and academic
Maya Harris
American attorney and advocate (born 1967)
Charles B. Rangel
former congressman from Harlem, New York
Letitia James
Attorney General of New York since 2019
Alcee Hastings
American politician & judge (1936–2021)
Mo Cowan
29th United States Senator from Massachusetts (Class 2)
Wayne Collett
American sprinter (1949–2010)
Donna Edwards
American politician (born 1958)
Tom Bradley
American politician (1917–1998)
Sylvester Turner
American attorney, politician (1954–2025)
Larry Elder
American talk radio host and attorney (born 1952)
Willie Brown Jr.
41st Mayor of San Francisco
Johnnie Cochran
American attorney (1937–2005)
Stephanie Tubbs Jones
American politician (1949–2008)
Harold Washington
American politician, former Mayor of the city of Chicago (1922—1987)
Jane Bolin
American judge (1908–2007)
Sheila Abdus-Salaam
American judge
Bobby Scott
U.S. Representative from Virginia
Annette Gordon-Reed
American historian
Ronald Noble
American law enforcement officer
A. Donald McEachin
U.S. Representative from Virginia (1961–2022)
Louis Stokes
American politician (1925-2015)
Tanya S. Chutkan
United States District Judge
Cheri Beasley
American judge, Senate candidate (2022)
William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr.
American attorney and judge, and fourth United States Secretary of Transportation (1920–2017)
John Roy Lynch
American politician from Mississippi
Christopher Darden
American lawyer
Benjamin Crump
American jurist
Kathleen Neal Cleaver
American activist (born 1945)
Stephen L. Carter
American legal academic and writer
Clifford Alexander, Jr.
Lawyer, businessman, public servant (1933–2022)
Carl Stokes
first African-American mayor of Cleveland
Mel Watt
American politician
Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander
first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in economics in the United States
Glenda Hatchett
American judge
Fred Gray
American attorney and activist
Oliver Hill
American lawyer (1907–2007)
Charles Hamilton Houston
American lawyer and civil rights attorney
Wilford Horace Smith
African-American lawyer
Eunice Carter
American lawyer
Frank Ballance
American politician (1942-2019)
William Levi Dawson
American politician (1886–1970)
Lani Guinier
American activist, lawyer and academic
Donn Clendenon
American professional baseball player, first baseman