Black History Month: Jane Bolin
Today's Black History Month illustration is of Jane Bolin. She was the first Black woman to graduate from Yale Law School and the first Black woman judge in the United States.
Jane Matilda Bolin was born in Poughkeepsie, NY in 1908. She was raised by her father, Gaius, a renowned Black attorney in Dutchess County, NY. Her mother, Matilda, a white Englishwoman, died when she was 8 years old.
In 1924, Bolin attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts, one of two Black students in her class. They were excluded from social activities and because of racial discrimination, they had to find housing off campus.
After she graduated in the top 20 in 1928, she considered applying to Yale Law School. Despite being discouraged by an advisor at Wellesley because she was Black and a woman, she applied to Yale and was accepted. She attained a Juris Doctor degree from Yale in 1931. She was one of three women in her graduating class and the first Black woman to earn a law degree from Yale.
She was a clerk in her father’s law office until she passed the New York bar exam in 1932, the first Black woman to do so. She married Ralph E. Mizelle, a fellow attorney, in 1933 and opened up a practice together in New York City. In 1937, she was named Assistant Corporation Counsel of the City of New York.
Two years later, in a surprise ceremony at the World’s Fair, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia appointed and swore in Bolin as Judge of the Domestic Relations Court (later known as the Family Court). She became the first Black woman judge, and she served on the Family Court bench for 40 years.
Fun fact: as a judge, Bolin didn’t wear judicial robes because she wanted to make children feel comfortable in her court.
During her tenure, Bolin fought against racial discrimination in the courts and advocated for children, especially children of color. She required that probation officers were assigned to cases regardless of race or religion and required that publicly funded childcare agencies accept children regardless of ethnicity.
Bolin reluctantly retired at the age of 70 in 1979. After retiring, she worked as a consultant and school-based volunteer and served on the board of the NAACP, the National Urban League, and the Child Welfare League. She died in 2007 at the age of 98 in Queens, NY.
I’ll be back tomorrow with another illustration and story!
-Alleanna
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Further reading:
Daughter of the Empire State: The Life of Judge Jane Bolin - Jacqueline A. McLeod
Sources:
Historical Society of the New York Courts
Home
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. "Jane M. Bolin with father Gaius C. Bolin" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1944. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/95d17469-72ca-1dc1-e040-e00a180622e0
Smithsonian Institution
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