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12 T. Marshall Law Review 415 (1986)
Black Enrollment in Law Schools: Forward to the Past

handle is hein.journals/thurlr12 and id is 429 raw text is: BLACK ENROLLMENT IN LAW SCHOOLS: FORWARD TO THE PAST?1 EDWARD J. LITTLEJOHN* LEONARD S. RUBINOWITZ** I. INTRODUCTION For a hundred years after the first Black student entered an American law school in 1868, Blacks were barely visible in law schools.2 Starting in the late 1960s, they made modest gains in enrollment. Black representation in law school peaked within a decade, and leveled off by the mid-1970s. This enrollment plateau continued until the mid-1980s, when signs appeared that Blacks might again become a rarity in law schools. The statistics tell a story of vast underrepresentation of Blacks in law school compared to their percentage of the population over the last century and a quarter. At the highest point, Blacks constituted about five percent of law students, less than half their proportion of the population. These figures provoke many questions such as: why have Blacks constituted such a miniscule percentage of law students for so long; why were the increases in Black enrollment so modest; and why the growth in Black enrollment ceased so quickly, to be replaced * Professor, Wayne State University Law School. ** Professor of Law and Research Faculty, Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University. The authors were Reporters to the American Bar Association Task Force on Minorities in the Legal Profession, which submitted its Report with Recommendations to the ABA Board of Governors in 1986. The authors wish to express their appreciation to Sharon Weitzman Soltman for her ex- tremely helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article and to Susan Sokup, Jeffrey Cumm- ings, Benjamin Cooper, Stephen Silverman, and Adam Glazer for their invaluable research assistance. 1. A more extended discussion of the issues raised in this article will appear in a forth- coming publication by the authors, on racial and ethnic minorities in the legal profession. The focus here is on Blacks, exclusively. The larger work will consider Asian-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans as well. It will also examine additional aspects of the legal profession, including legal employers, the judiciary, and bar organizations. 2. No systematic data are available on Black enrollment during the first century of Black attendance at law schools. Information is partial and fragmentary, and many details are missing. However, the statistical and anecdotal data are all consistent, so that clear patterns emerge, as discussed infra, text accompanying notes 3-21.

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