CBA Record November-December 2025

EDITORIAL BOARD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Nikki Marcotte Kirkland & Ellis LLP ASSOCIATE EDITOR Anne Ellis 2E Services, LLC SUMMARY JUDGMENTS EDITOR Daniel A. Cotter Aronberg Goldgehn YLS JOURNAL EDITORS J. Kopczyk Attorney at Law CBA RECORD

EDITOR’S BRIEFCASE

BY NIKKI MARCOTTE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

A Song of Hope: Pauli Murray’s Enduring Civil Rights Legacy

P op quiz: Which legal pioneer zeal ously championed women’s rights and gender equality and helped shape Title VII’s prohibition of and protections against gender-based discrimination? If you answered Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you’d technically be correct. But as all the best LSAT and bar exam prep materials would say, “There’s a better answer.” If, instead, you answered that it was Pauli Murray—a queer Black (and likely gender nonconforming) lawyer, scholar, activist, Episcopal priest, and prolific author—you’d get the gold star.

Katherine Hanson First District Appellate Court

Daniel J. Berkowitz Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston & Zimet LLP Jacob B. Berger Tabet DiVito & Rothstein LLC Amy Cook Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Anthony F. Fata Kirby McInerney LLP Clifford Gately Quarles & Brady Meredith A. Geller Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Judge Jasmine Villaflor Hernandez Circuit Court of Cook County Kaitlin King Hart David Carson LLP Theodore Kontopoulos Internal Revenue Service Kathryn C. Liss DePaul University College of Law Marissa Longoria Circuit Court of Cook County’s Clerk’s Office Clare McMahon Reed, Centracchio & Associates, LLC Pamela Sakowicz Menaker

The late Dr. Murray fundamentally molded how jurists understand racial and gender equality within the context of our constitutional jurisprudence. And yet, they remain a largely unknown figure in our legal history. That is why, in honor of their birthday on November 20, I wanted to share a little about their incredible legacy in this column. Dr. Murray got involved in the Civil Rights Movement early. They gained national attention starting in 1938 for persistent media and letter-writing campaigns to call out the University of North Carolina after the racially segregated school denied them entry into one of the graduate programs because they were Black—a series of campaigns that led to a lifelong friendship with then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. They inspired the likes of Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks when, in 1940, they were arrested and jailed for refusing to sit at the back of a bus in Virginia. Dr. Murray was one of the first perceived women to attend law school at Howard Uni versity, where they continued to wield their typewriter to speak truth to power about the systemic oppression Black women in particular faced (coining the term “Jane Crow”); helped organize restaurant sit-ins; and helped form the Congress of Racial Equality. They graduated top of their class in 1944—the only identified woman in the class at the time. It was a position that should have landed them a prestigious fellowship at Harvard Law, but since Harvard did not allow women to attend then, they were rejected despite a letter of support from Franklin D. Roosevelt. Nevertheless, they persisted. Dr. Murray went on to earn an LLM from Berkeley and, much later, became the first Black person to earn a JSD from Yale Law. Other impressive legal accomplishments: they passed the California bar; became California’s first Black deputy attorney general; became the first Black woman to be hired as an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; served as John F. Kennedy’s appointment on the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women; and co-founded the National Organization for Women.

Clifford Law Offices Kathleen Dillon Narko Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Alexander Passo Latimer LeVay Fyock LLC Trisha M. Rich Holland & Knight LLP Adam J. Sheppard Sheppard Law Firm, PC Richard Lee Stavins Buchalter Kevin A. Thompson Levin Ginsburg Rosemary Simota Thompson

Judge E. Kenneth Wright, Jr. Circuit Court of Cook County

THE CHICAGO BAR ASSOCIATION Sharon Nolan Director of Marketing

4 November/December 2025