James Dilday, Bruce Hubbard, Wayne Budd, Richard Soden, Fletcher
Wiley, Brenda Elam (daughter of the late Clarence Elam), Norman Huggins,
Clarence Dilday (the first MBLA president), retired judge Fred Brown
and Henry Owens.
Group fought for equal legal representation
In 1973, three Black lawyers founded the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association (MBLA). Today, the professional association has 110 members.
Founding president Clarence Dilday, along with Henry Owens and Frederick Brown, created the MBLA, which this month celebrated its 50th anniversary, to help increase the number of African American judges, lawyers and court clerks in the state.
Since then, more than 70 Black lawyers have served as state judges, three as Suffolk County district attorneys and one as chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court. 1,464 belong to the Massachusetts Bar, according to the 2020-21 Massachusetts Lawyer Census.
Now retired after teaching criminal law and forensics at UMass Boston for 20 years, Dilday, who turns 83 this July, recalled the establishment of MBLA and some of its early accomplishments.
“It started with three Black lawyers trying to crack the system. One of the most significant things the MBLA did then was help to increase the number of Black judges in Massachusetts,” Dilday said.
Back then, there was a dearth of people of color working in the state’s criminal justice administration. In 1972, Massachusetts voters approved a referendum requiring judges to retire at 70, which created 38 vacancies on the bench.
On
Oct. 11 that year, Dilday submitted to Gov. Francis W. Sargent a list
of 19 Black attorneys he considered eminently qualified for state
judgeships — 18 men and one woman. Several were nominated and confirmed
as judges, including James W. Bailey, Richard L. Banks, David Nelson and
Herbert E. Tucker Jr.
“We
pushed for more Black judges and were able to get a handful,” Dilday
said. He added that in its early years, the MBLA was active “on every
front and wanted to see more Black court officers as well.”
Dilday also involved the MBLA in community affairs.
“I
got the lawyers to support the ‘Stop the Highway’ Movement. It was not
the effort of the MBLA alone or Boston’s Black United Front alone, but
we did succeed in stopping construction of the highway. I was counsel
for the United Front and, of course, Chuck Turner led the movement,”
Dilday said, referring to planned interstate highways that would have
cut through Roxbury.
“People
were resistant to change, but we were changing things,” he said. “There
were no more than a handful of lawyers then, and very few at the white
firms. To see Black partners in major law firms now is so uplifting.
We’ve come a long way but still have a long way to go.”
Asked
what he thought of today’s MBLA and its 50th anniversary gala on May 5,
Dilday said he was gratified: “I’m very proud of what the MBLA has
accomplished, fortunate to be alive to see it. I’m proud of the
organization because I think it’s blossomed. The gala must have had a
couple of hundred people there.”
Dilday called Black lawyers “the guardians of democracy” and said they “must fight to maintain it.”
Norman Huggins, a graduate of Boston University School of law, was one of the first members of the MBLA.
“Back
then, I probably could have named every Black lawyer in the state. I’m
not exaggerating when I say that because there were very few” in the
early 1970s, he said.
Huggins
recalled that the only Black firm in the state then was Tucker &
Cardoza. Tucker became a Dorchester District Court judge after Sargent
nominated him to succeed Jerome P. Troy in December 1973.
“That
was the situation when we started the Massachusetts Black Lawyers
Association. I was working with Owens and Dilday — Henry Owens and
Clarence Dilday. They started the firm a couple of years before that. It
was Owens, Dilday & Brown, but then Frederick Brown left,” Huggins
said. In 1976, Brown became the first Black ever to serve on a
Massachusetts appellate court.
“And
then Wayne Budd and Salim Shakur started a firm,” Huggins added. “I say
‘firm’ loosely, because, like Tucker and Cardoza, there were only two
of them. [They] got together and another fella, Tom Reilly, came in with
them. He later was attorney general. At some point later, some younger
guys came into the firm. But back then, in ’71, ’72, that was about it
for [Black] law firms.” Reilly, who is white, had grown up with Budd in
Springfield.
Huggins indicated that the unfair grading of the state bar exam was a reason there were so few Black lawyers.
“Prior
to 1971, the percentage of Blacks who passed the bar was very small,
and that was a concern of ours. When we were first organizing, one of
the things we were doing was preparing to sue the bar examiners. I think
Dennis Tourse might have been one of the attorneys who prepared the
complaint,” he said. “After word got out that we were preparing to sue
them, the percentage of Blacks who passed the bar went way up.”
Huggins
said the bar examiners certainly didn’t want a lawsuit because that
would have exposed what was going on in the grading of the exams.
“I don’t believe that the exams were graded fairly, and I don’t believe they were graded anonymously,” he said.
Huggins, like Dilday, said he is proud of what MBLA has become.
“At
the gala, you had a room full of young Black lawyers who are
intelligent — folks who are moving, who have ideas. It was really great
to see that.”
Sania
Santos, a member of the MBLA’s board of directors and co-chair of its
Community Service and Social Action Committee, said, “The biggest
takeaway from this year’s celebration is that we wanted to honor the
attorneys who were the founding members of the organization. They were
lawyers 50 years ago, so at this point they were mostly in their 80s or
older.”
Documenting the past
Throughout
the past year, the MBLA documented the surviving 13 founding or first
members’ perspectives on what it was like being a Black lawyer 50 years
ago and how it’s changed over the years.
“We
wanted to really grasp that moment and be able to have an archive — a
documentary for the future. So, we interviewed most of them. We had a
videographer make the documentary, which is going to be released soon,”
Santos said.
“There were a few who we couldn’t find, and some who had passed away,” she said. But any who could be located attended the gala.
In
keeping with its commitment to community service, the CSSA Committee
under Santos’ leadership launched a Know Your Rights program to educate
the Boston community about its legal rights. In the past, the
committee’s presentations were limited to criminal law.
“I thought that in serving our community, there were other areas of law that we could pick from,” Santos said.
So,
this past year, her committee presented a series of free monthly
seminars about rights under zoning, landlord-tenant and family laws, and
one on trademarking. The seminars are held on the last Wednesday of
every month at the Lena Park Community Center.
“We
were able to secure three or four, sometimes five, attorneys who were
experts in their respective fields, and we would provide a
two-to-three-hour seminar on the basic points of the law, but also
what’s most relevant in the law,” Santo said. She plans to expand the
reach of the Know Your Rights program to other areas of Massachusetts.
In
addition, the MBLA has an attorney referral program that identifies
attorneys of color who specialize in different areas of law. “If a
layperson wants an employment discrimination lawyer, he can contact the
MBLA and obtain a list of attorneys who practice employment law,” Santos
said. “This not only promotes attorneys of color but also allows
clients to be represented by people who look like them.”
Her first year on the MBLA board, though like a part-time job, was extremely rewarding.
“I
felt like I was stepping into my purpose in terms of, you know, giving
back within this career, versus just reaping the benefits of getting
paid well,” she said.
Santos hopes other attorneys will find time to give back.
“You
can make time, no matter how busy you are, to give back, whether it’s
through the MBLA or other ways,” she said. “Volunteer your knowledge of
the law to advance the community.”