In 1939, Jane Matilda Bolin became the first Black woman to serve as a judge in the United States. But this was only after becoming the first African-American woman graduate of Yale Law School, to join the New York City Bar Association, and to join the New York City Law Department.
Today, almost 80 years later, Black women preside over courtrooms both on and off the television screen. Don’t let the entertainment value of these women discount their professional accolades though.
Black women judges on television followed the path of Jane Matilda Bolin - making history as “firsts,” and serving the communities they love.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display("div-gpt-ad-1512094833018-0"); });
Judge Lynn Toler, Divorce Court
An alumna of both Harvard University and The University of Pennsylvania Law School, Judge Toler was first elected judge of The Cleveland Heights Municipal Court in 1993. A dedicated public servant, Judge Toler mentored young, at-risk girls and advocated for victims of domestic violence through initiatives like the Cleveland Heights Coordinated Community Response to Violence against Women and Templum House, a battered women’s shelter.
A woman of many talents, Judge Toler has served as an adjunct professor, is a published author, and the mother/step-mother six sons. Her books build upon her experiences both in the courtroom and in her personal life. My Mother’s Rules: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Emotional Genius, for example, is a memoir sharing how she coped with a parent who was mentally ill. While Making Marriage Work: New Rules for an Old Institution blends her courtroom experience with changing social tides to provide solutions to America’s rising divorce rate.
A beacon of daytime television and legal pioneer in her own right, Judge Toler is a boss both in and outside of the courtroom - telling you like it is, and sharing the steps needed to get where you want to go.
Judge Mablean Ephriam, Justice with Judge Mablean
Judge Mablean is no newcomer to the camera.
In addition to starring in Tyler Perry’s “Madea” movies, Judge Mablean presided over Divorce Court for seven years (1999-2006) - where she was the first star of the revived version of the show.
Though born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, Judge Mablean was raised in Los Angeles, CA where she would eventually serve as a prosecuting attorney. Before entering the world of entertainment, Judge Mablean worked in investment banking and as a correctional officer, legal secretary, and law clerk.
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
After years as a city prosecutor, Judge Mablean opened her own practice and remained engaged in her local community. She led the Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, served on the Executive Committee of the State Bar of California - Family Law Section, and joined the Los Angeles County Bar Association. She was also the first Black woman on the Board of Directors of Union Rescue Mission - just to name a few.
Judge Mablean did not apply for her TV gig. Rather, word-of-mouth of her legal talents made its way to an entertainment attorney, and the showrunners hired Judge Mablean within seven days of her interview.
As an entrepreneur, Judge Mablean owns a Bed & Breakfast in Johannesburg, South Africa, and attributes her success to God, her parents, her family, and close friends. Want to know how she does it? Check out her book, Judge Mablean’s Life Lessons: Tools for Weekly Living.
Judge Faith Jenkins, Judge Faith
Judge Faith debuted in September 2014, only after a substantive legal and pageant career.
As the highest ranking student in her graduating class at Southern University Law School (Baton Rouge, LA), Judge Faith went on to litigate for the prestigious Sidley Austin law firm. Transferring from a docket of high-profile clients and complex commercial litigation issues, Judge Faith would move from Wall Street to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and later to private practice involving issues of business, white-collar defense, and government investigations, among other areas.
In 2001, Faith Jenkins became the only contestant in the history of the Miss America Pageant to be awarded all three of the following awards: swimsuit, talent, and “Quality of Life” - recognizing her volunteer work around issues of literacy and education. Though she placed first runner-up in the 2001 pageant, Judge Faith already carried the title as the first African American woman to win the Miss Louisiana Tech title in 2000.
Judge Karen Mills-Francis, Supreme Justice with Judge Karen
Judge Karen is known for her “no-nonsense” approach to the courtroom.
The Honourable Karen Mills-Francis made her nationally-syndicated TV-debut in September 2008. After a formal audition process, Judge Karen was selected and soon began daily taping of shows in Los Angeles, CA.
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
With extensive legal experience, Judge Karen spent 13 years practicing criminal defense law, as well as private practice. She later became the first Black woman to serve on the bench in Miami-Dade County.
In her signature burgundy robe, Judge Karen is no stranger to standing out - or speaking out. She is a staunch advocate for women’s empowerment and authored Stay in Your Lane: Judge Karen’s Guide to Living Your Best Life aims to empower readers to take charge of their own lives through positive mental and emotional health.
These Black women accomplished historical feats even before reaching your TV-screen. Make sure you know their history before you change the channel.
On September 15, 1963, four KKK members bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL. The blast killed four Black girls and changed the course of the Civil Rights Movement forever.
It was Sunday morning. The girls were putting on their choir robes in the church basement.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display("div-gpt-ad-1512094833018-0"); });
Suddenly, there was an earth-shattering blast. The basement walls crumbled and trapped Addie, Carole, Cynthia and Denise.
A furious crowd descended upon the church en masse. Rev. John Cross, Jr. tried to calm the crowd by reciting Psalms 23, but to no avail.
Violence erupted and riots took over the city for the next few days. As news of the hate crime spread to the rest of the country, white people had to confront their passive reactions to racial injustice.
"Who did it? We all did it!” said Charles Morgan, a young white lawyer, in a speech the following day. He continued by stating, “The 'who' is every little individual who talks about the 'niggers' and spreads the seeds of his hate to his neighbor and his son.”
Birmingham was a city fraught with racism. Martin Luther King, Jr. called it the most segregated city in the country. With 21 bombings over the course of 8 years, some people aptly deemed the city “Bombingham.”
Justice for the bombing didn’t come until 1977, when then-Alabama Attorney General William Baxley prosecuted one of the assailants. Attorney Doug Jones prosecuted two others in 2000, who were sentenced to life in prison. One man died before facing charges.
The four Black girls’ deaths were not in vain. Fortunately, the bombing led to increased support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
For a survivor’s account of the events that day, read While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement.
DNA testing sites like Ancestry.com and 23andMe.com ask for a spit or hair sample as standard procedure to uncover your lineage and even risks for hereditary illnesses.
But thanks to fine print in their Terms of Service agreement, your genetic data AND that of your relatives are theirs for the keeping - even after you die! Here’s why that’s incredibly dangerous.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display("div-gpt-ad-1512094833018-0"); });
Ancestry DNA and others can legally use the genetic information you volunteered for medical research or technological experimentation. Or, they can simply hand it off to the police for investigation, insurers to deny you coverage, or even employers to deny you employment… without telling you a thing!
Worse still, these sites are in cahoots with the Rapid DNA Act signed into law by President Trump that permits the police to build a database filled with DNA samples - samples provided by unsuspecting family members who may have uploaded information to find a long lost relative.
The act allows all kinds of activities that invade your privacy.
It’s absolutely disgusting how private companies are exploiting our desire to learn more about the history many of our families lost, by no fault of our own, just to make a profit.
If you feel one of these sites has taken advantage of your or a relative’s deep yearning to know who you are and where you come from, there is a way to delete your already submitted DNA samples.
According to Consumer Reports, the best ways to delete your data from these sites include contacting the company’s customer support department and de-selecting any agreement to have your data samples stored (known as “biobanking”) or shared with third-party researchers in your account settings.
And above all, read the fine print before sharing this kind of precious information with online companies eager to breach your privacy for a buck.
Seven hundred years before the Transatlantic Slave Trade, there was the Arab Slave Trade (also known as the Sub-Saharan Slave Trade) from 650 - 2007.
Across North and West Africa, over 10 million of our ancestors were chained and forced to endure merciless desert walks across hundreds of miles to markets in Egypt and Zanzibar. Yet this wasn’t even close to the most brutal part for those who survived.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display("div-gpt-ad-1512094833018-0"); });
Plantation owners and wealthy rulers with harems looking for guards in Indonesia, China, southwest Asia, and India were willing to pay a premium for young boys... if they were castrated.
They believed amputating some or all of the boys’ organs made them harder workers who posed no sexual threat to free or enslaved women in the household. Despicable!
6 out of 10 bled to death during the heinous procedure, yet it was still considered profitable for traders to continue neutering men like animals.
This cruelty went on even after the Transatlantic Slave Trade was formally abolished.
This horrendous crime isn’t even over. In 2017, Libya made headlines worldwide after footage of Arabs trading enslaved Blacks surfaced.
What are we going to do?
It’s popular for people to say they are going “Back to Africa,” but rarely do we talk about former movements of doing so. To be honest, “Back to Africa” efforts have come in waves and seen their share of success and failure.
As early as 1820, Black Americans began journeys back home via the American Colonization Society (ACS) founded by Charles Mercer and Robert Finley. Comprised of prominent white religious leaders and slave owners, the ACS had contradictory intentions for supporting the migration of free Blacks to Africa.
While religious figures thought that Blacks would have a better chance for true freedom by leaving the U.S., slave owners either desired to get rid of them out of fear of rebellion or wanted them to stay in order to exploit them for further economic gain.
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
Many free Blacks had doubts about leaving the country and were often too afraid to leave what they were conditioned to view as “comfort” near white people.
It was around this time when many American-born Africans began considering themselves African-Americans despite living in a nation that clearly did not want them there.
But what about the Blacks who chose to leave?
The ACS founded the Republic of Liberia and welcomed nearly 13,000 residents by time of the Civil War. The Liberian government promised 25 acres of land to Black migrants from America, but those who came over encountered unexpected challenges.
Although Liberia was described as a new home and land of opportunity, many of these formerly enslaved folks had been stripped of their original languages and customs and converted to Christianity leaving them with few solid connections to their roots.
Additionally, the first rulers of Liberia were white and the subsequent Blacks from America who rose to power often emulated what they learned from these past leaders, which led to the subjugation of native Africans who were in the region.
Migration died down for a while until the next wave resurfaced with the rise of the KKK in South. Blacks feared for their lives and saw no hope for achieving true equality in America.
Unfortunately traveling to Africa was costly, so lots of people who hoped to go were precluded from doing so.
Up until this point there had been no Black-led efforts to get people back to the motherland, but then arrived the legendary Marcus Garvey bringing with him the idea of African Zionism.
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
In Garvey’s own words, “many white men have tried to uplift them [the Negroes], but the only way is for the Negroes to have a nation of their own, like the Jews, that will command the respect of the world with its achievements."
Garvey developed a three-pronged approach to getting people to Africa. First, he established the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which birthed crucial organizations that aided in the effort to get resources to Liberia.
Second, he created the Black Star Line that provided direct transportation to different parts of Africa. Finally, he instituted the Negro Factories Corporation to encourage Black economic independence by building factories, grocery stores, restaurants, and other businesses.
Unlike the ACS, Garvey was not simply motivated by the idea of racial separation from white Americans but rather a definitive need for Black nationalism. Much of his political and religious thought spawned rastafarianism and inspired the Nation of Islam.
Revisiting these “Back to Africa” movements begs us to ponder what such a push would look like today. Media-driven stereotypes about Africa may hinder our ability to even conceptualize what life could be like for us there.
Additionally, “Back to Africa” rhetoric often focuses on the idea of freedom and returning to roots, but are most people prepared for that cultural immersion?
If a new “Back to Africa” movement is going to work, we must all come together and repair what has been lost culturally and reject much of the poison Europeans have injected us with. Stokely Carmichael said it best when he articulated that it all starts with a focus on Africa and accepting ourselves as African, not just being Black.
If you are interested in planning your return home, Ghana has implemented a “Right of Abode” program which welcomes all brothers and sisters in the Diaspora to become citizens of the nation.
Harmonia Rosales is a self-taught Afro-Cuban, Chicago-based artist finding success - and controversy - by flipping the script on fine art and “classical” religious images.
Studies have long shown the power of art to affect people’s self-image. Her most famous pieces recreate iconic religious paintings - such as The Birth of Venus and The Creation of Adam - but with Black women as the central figures.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display("div-gpt-ad-1512094833018-0"); });
“When you consider that all human life came out of Africa, the Garden of Eden and all, then it only makes sense to paint God as a black woman,” she told BuzzFeed.
“When all we see in art history is a male-dominated white heaven, we become the inferior,” she continued. Christianity teaches that human beings are made in the image of God. So shouldn’t our images of God reflect the beauty of Blackness as well?
Her incredible work has, of course, got white people - who are used to being the only ones seen as beautiful, angelic beings - incredibly upset. Rosales suffered a barrage of racist attacks when her paintings first went viral on Instagram.
But she’s not stopping. With customers such as Erykah Badu and Samuel L. Jackson, and fans around the world, Rosales is continuing her important work and has big dreams. When asked where she’d most love to see her work hung, she answered simply: “The White House.”