by Kathleen E. Gordon American Women's Legal History May 13, 1997
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
A. Background
C. Law School
III. Early Legal Career
I. Introduction
When I first read about Edith Sampson (1901?-1979), I was surprised that I had never heard of her before. She represents many firsts: the first African American to be appointed as a delegate to the United Nations, the first African American member of NATO, the first black woman to be elected as a judge in the United States, among the first to break the color line of the National Association of Women Lawyers and the first woman to receive an L.L.M. degree from Loyola University. During a time when African Americans and women faced formidable barriers to joining and succeeding in the legal profession, Edith Sampson overcame double discrimination to have an outstanding career. She was generally well-known in her day by blacks and whites alike, and African Americans who are now outstanding adults looked up to her as a model when they were children.1
Why, then, does she surface so rarely? The answer may be that for a time, both the civil rights and feminist movements abandoned Mrs. Sampson. In their eyes, she was too centrist and thus did not advocate the sort of radical change that the ongoing racial oppression of her day demanded. By the 1960s, though she was praised for tending to the needs of the poor from the bench, the new generation of civil rights activists had labeled her a "handkerchief head."2 They did not think that she could inspire them.
They were correct that racial discrimination demands immediate, drastic change. However, I think that Mrs. Sampson would still have some things to say to us about the value of the democratic process, the importance of developing interpersonal understandings across racial lines and the uniqueness of life in America. We may not always agree with her, but she deserves our attention. Not only do her accomplishments command our respect, but her idealism and passion can serve as examples to a generation known for its cynicism.
II. Early Life and Social Work Career
Edith Sampson, née Spurlock, was born on October 13, possibly in 1901, more likely earlier, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.3 She was one of seven children. Although most reports about her mention that she grew up in the slums, this was probably not accurate.4 According to her own accounts, although money was scarce, and nothing was wasted or taken for granted, the Spurlocks provided a secure existence for their children. Louis Spurlock earned $75 per month as a shipping clerk in a cleaning, pressing and dyeing establishment. Elizabeth Spurlock worked at home making buckram hat frames and twisting switches of false hair. They owned their home, had "white table linen and silver," and "the children always had more than one pair of shoes."5 However, when she was fourteen years old, Edith took a leave of absence from school in the eighth grade to work in a fish market, boning and scaling fish. This tends to indicate that the family's financial situation may have sometimes been precarious.
Edith Spurlock graduated from Peabody High School, a public school. Shortly thereafter, her Sunday School teacher learned that the Associated Charities of Pittsburgh was in need of a black social worker. She recommended Edith to the organization, which arranged for her to attend the New York School of Social Work. There, one of Edith's professors was George W. Kirchwey, also a professor at Columbia University Law School. After she distinguished herself in his criminology class, he remarked to her, "You are in the wrong field. You have the earmarks of a lawyer."6 Three years after finishing high school, Edith Spurlock married Rufus Sampson, a field agent for the Tuskeegee Institute. In a much later article, Mrs. Sampson seemed to imply that one of the reasons that she did not follow George Kirchwey's advice and go to law school at that time was because she got married "instead."7
Shortly after Mrs. Sampson finished her undergraduate work, her husband was transferred to Chicago. There, she found a job conducting a survey of conditions in the city's South Side neighborhoods for the Young Women's Christian Association. At the same time, she took graduate courses at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. Upon finishing her work for the YWCA, she took a job as a social worker with the Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society.
Around 1922, she met with her former professor, George Kirchwey, when he traveled to Chicago to give a lecture. He again encouraged Mrs. Sampson to become an attorney. This time, she followed his advice and enrolled in the night program at John Marshall Law School, still working a full-time job during the day finding homes for abandoned, abused and neglected children. She studied on streetcars between work, school and home.
During her first year of law school, and perhaps throughout, Mrs. Sampson was probably both the only woman and the only African American student. Later, she remembered that most of the white male students refused to associate with her, and that in her classes, they would force her to sit on the perimeter of the class, telling her that all of the middle seats were taken, even though they clearly were not.8 Interestingly, this is not something that she ever mentioned to reporters. Regardless, Mrs. Sampson did quite well in law school, earning a special commendation from Dean Edward T. Lee for receiving the highest grade among the 95 students in her jurisprudence course.
Mrs. Sampson graduated from law school in 1925 and failed the Illinois bar exam. She attributed this to overconfidence and called it "the best thing that could have happened to me."9 She said that it made her want to work even harder to become a lawyer.10 Therefore, she enrolled in the Loyola University Law School graduate degree program to obtain her L.L.M. At the same time, she continued to work full-time during the day, this time as a probation officer for the Cook County Juvenile Court. She completed her degree in 1927 and was admitted to the Illinois bar in the same year.
Mrs. Sampson began her legal career by working simultaneously as a solo practitioner and as a referee in the Cook County Juvenile Court, to which position she was appointed by Judge Frank H. Bicek. At some point before 1934, she and Rufus Sampson divorced.11 In 1934, the same year that she was admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, she married her second husband, Joseph E. Clayton. Because she was already professionally known as Edith Sampson, she decided to keep her first married name for public purposes.
Joe and Edith seemed to have a very rich, satisfying relationship. They were quite proud of one another, and each supported the other's career. Joseph Clayton was known as "one hell of a lawyer," albeit rather eccentric and absent-minded.12 According to one anecdote, he appeared in court wearing one black shoe and one brown shoe, but his arguments were so organized and persuasive that neither the jury nor the judge seemed to notice.13 Also, Joseph Clayton litigated the then-famous People v. Nixon case, which became the basis for Richard Wright's book Native Son. Mrs. Sampson was reportedly rather bitter that her husband never received any acknowledgment from Wright.14 The couple remained happily married until his death in 1959.
At some point during her early legal career, one of Mrs. Sampson's sisters died. The sister had appointed Mrs. Sampson the guardian of her two children, so for a time, Mrs. Sampson cared for them in her home. It is unclear how old the children were when they went to live with Mrs. Sampson or how long they stayed with her. This must have happened well before 1949, because by that time, though reporters often mentioned the fact that Mrs. Sampson had raised her sister's children, they were no longer living with her.
Mr. Clayton joined his wife's South Side law practice. Their law office served many poor people who would have otherwise had difficulty obtaining representation. The couple specialized in criminal and domestic relations cases.
In 1938, along with Georgia Jones Ellis, another alumna of the John Marshall Law School, Mrs. Sampson gained admission to the Chicago chapter of the National Association of Women Lawyers. The NAWL had previously been all-white, so Sampson and Ellis were its first black members.15 It is not known whether this caused any uproar within the organization.
Being a black woman attorney in the 1930s and 40s was obviously not easy. Even by 1947, there were only about 8,000 female attorneys in the United States, of whom just 70 were African American.16 Furthermore, in 1947, obtaining a legal job in private practice and building client base were so difficult for women that over 50% of female attorneys were working as non-lawyers for government agencies, social service or civil liberties organizations.17 Black women seemed to find sex a more serious barrier than race, but they had little sympathy for their white counterparts.18 Sadie T. M. Alexander, a black woman attorney in the 1940s remarked, "When I hear white women lawyers complaining about their lot, it amuses me. It is the same problem I have been facing all my life."19
Although Mrs. Sampson found that many of her male colleagues, particularly white men, were "exceedingly cool" to her, she also found that judges would often bend over backwards to compensate for this churlishness.20 In terms of her courtroom manner, a friend described her as "a kind of free-wheeler with a completely unorthodox approach to law."21 Even in her own words, she said, "I talk from my heart and let the law take care of itself."22
In 1947, Mrs. Sampson was appointed to serve as an assistant state's attorney in Cook County. By that time, she was affiliated with a number of organizations, including the Women's Progressive Committee (she served as its president), the Chicago Professional Women's Club (also holding a term as president), the Afro-World Fellowship (also its president), the South Side Boy's Club, the South Side Community Center, the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, the Chicago Urban League, and the National Council of Negro Women (she chaired its executive committee).
IV. International Diplomacy: Mrs. Sampson's U.N. Career
The period of Edith Sampson's career between 1949 and 1962 is probably the most complex and interesting facet of her life. Mrs. Sampson was extremely proud to represent her country in the international community. Furthermore, she felt that her expertise in the law, social services and basic human nature placed her in a unique position to promote democracy and human rights. However, her prominence placed her in a difficult position. On the one hand, Mrs. Sampson felt strongly that she was representing America to the world, and she thought that democracy was the best political system. Therefore, she often found herself apologizing abroad for America's domestic racial policies. On the other hand, Mrs. Sampson believed that African Americans had been robbed of their civil rights and that they should demand full political and social equality. Therefore, it must have been particularly painful for her when she received criticism from civil rights proponents for downplaying the oppression of blacks in America. To understand her position, it is important to examine both her personal ideology and the political realities of her time.
In 1949, a radio program called America's Town Meeting of the Air initiated a world tour during which representatives of American interest groups would speak about various issues of the day. The purpose of the tour was to advertise abroad the benefits of American democracy and the free market. The National Council of Negro Women sent Edith Sampson as its emissary. Before the Town Hall tour, Mrs. Sampson had always suffered from stage fright. In fact, as an attorney, she often waived jury trials because she felt more confident about presenting her case to the judge one-on-one.
When asked to go on the Town Hall tour, she thought about her experiences and "concluded that she could tell (people) something about America and democracy. When put before a microphone, all her stage fright disappeared."24
It is important to recall that racial discrimination in America was one of the most effective propaganda tools used by Communist politicians around the world during the Cold War. During the Town Hall tour, Mrs. Sampson addressed questions in nearly every country about the status of blacks in the United States. Every time, she admitted that horrible examples of racism and oppression existed in America. Yet she always turned these questions around to emphasize how much democracy, properly practiced, could help oppressed people. She used several rhetorical steps. First, she tried to clarify what she saw as exaggerations about American race relations. Mrs. Sampson felt that the rumors circulating abroad were even worse than the reality at home:
Wherever we went we found that people had been misled into believing that fifteen million American Negroes lived behind barbed wire. They were amazed that I had a law degree, attended a white church, and had never been to a segregated school in my life.25
Next, she pointed out how much progress blacks as a formerly enslaved people, had made since emancipation, citing rising literacy and employment rates, legal breakthroughs like the Supreme Court's decision in Shelley v. Kramer 26 and examples of individual achievements. Finally, she explained that white Americans who wanted to bar their fellow citizens from full equality were not practicing democracy but were in fact thwarting the democratic system. Therefore, rather than the Communist view of the American political and economic system as the source of racial oppression, she hoped to show others that when practiced as intended, democracy and the free market would lead to progress, equality and harmony.
From many quarters, Mrs. Sampson received rave reviews at home and abroad for her Town Hall speeches. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas remembered that:
[a] speech in New Delhi, 16 August 1949 by Edith Sampson . . . created such a profound impression. She made it clear that while she would fight for the rights of her people at home, she would stand for no criticism of America abroad by reason of the color issue. That speech created more good will and understanding in India than any other act by any American.27
In Pakistan, she gave a talk to the League of Pakistani Women. She told them that she had put herself through school, that her clients were poor people and that she was not a rich woman. She said that nevertheless, she attributed so much of her success to the American system that she was willing to travel around the world at her own expense to communicate the value of democracy to others.. During her speech, Begum Liaquat Ali Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan's wife, quietly circulated through the audience and collected a gift of $5,000, which she presented to Mrs. Sampson as a token of the League's gratitude for her sacrifices to travel to their country. While the other Americans in the delegation squirmed with discomfort, Mrs. Sampson graciously accepted the gift, knowing that it would have been rude to refuse, and then, knowing that it would also have been rude to take the money, immediately gave the League a $5,000 donation to be used for its charitable work.
Mrs. Sampson was such a popular member of the Town Hall delegation that when the group concluded its tour in Hawaii and decided to create a permanent World Town Hall Seminar for further international democracy education programs, it elected her as its president. Shortly after the end of the tour, the delegation reconvened in Washington, D.C., where it held a congratulatory banquet in a well-known Washington hotel.28 When the hotel staff learned that one of the guests of honor was black, they refused to serve the group. The organizers moved the banquet to another hotel at the last minute. Throughout the meal, the other members of the delegation were uncomfortable and nervous, eating sparingly--all except for Mrs. Sampson. When a guest finally asked her how she could eat, Mrs. Sampson quipped, "I've been colored a long time, and if I stopped eating every time something like this happened to me, I'd be thin as a rail. And you can see I have no problems in that direction."29 Mrs. Sampson later remarked that after the Town Hall tour ended, "I knew that I could never make my law practice the primary business of my life; I would have to devote myself to the cause of world brotherhood and world peace."30
Before the Town Hall tour, Mrs. Sampson was already interested in the work of the United Nations. Several times, the National Council of Negro women sent her to Lake Success, New York, to act as an observer when the General Assembly was addressing certain issues. She was also involved with the United Nations Association of Chicago. After the Town Hall tour, Mrs. Sampson traveled all over the United States speaking to groups about the effects of American domestic racial policies on its international diplomacy, particularly the fight against Communism. Her activities attracted President Truman's attention, and he decided to appoint her as the first alternate delegate to the United Nations General Assembly.
She received the news in Boston, where she was about to give a lecture. The telephone in her hotel room rang, and the voice on the line said that the White House was calling. She responded, "Just who is ribbing me?" When the President's secretary assured her that the call was legitimate, and Truman wanted to know whether she would be willing to serve as a U.N. delegate, she was speechless. She sputtered, "Would I? Would I?"31 Not one to be coy, she accepted at once. At least one reporter remarked that she must have known that it would be all right with her husband.32 When her appointment was officially announced, she was canning peaches in her home in Chicago. When reporters arrived at her door to hear her reaction to the news, she received the reporters briefly to answer their questions, then resumed her canning.33
1. Mrs. Sampson's committee work
Mrs. Sampson saw the U.N. as a wonderful way to focus international attention on the problems of people all over the world. She said that "To me, the U.N. is the most ambitious experiment in adult education at the highest level ever attempted in history."34
Mrs. Sampson served on U.N. Committee Three, the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee. One of her first tasks on that committee was to draft a resolution prohibiting any member nation from jamming radio broadcasts beamed in by other nations. "While no nation was mentioned by name, the move was obviously intended to discourage the Soviet Union from continuing its jamming of broadcasts from outside its borders," particularly Voice of America broadcasts.35 Mrs. Sampson frequently recorded messages to be broadcast by Voice of America. Although her speeches were meticulously prepared by her assistants, she never read them on the air. Instead, she scanned the papers handed to her to make sure she had the correct facts, then she tossed the sheets aside and spoke from her heart.36
The next time that the Soviet Union felt the wrath of Edith Sampson was in 1951, when she presented a resolution demanding an impartial commission to investigate the efforts of member nations to repatriate prisoners of war from World War II. In the early 1950s, there were many P.O.W.'s who had been known by the end of the war to be alive and in the Soviet Union, but who had not been allowed to return home, and their families had heard nothing more about them for years. The Soviets were notoriously slow in repatriating their P.O.W.'s, and they stonewalled all attempts to obtain information about the status and whereabouts of these prisoners. As Mrs. Sampson became more well-known in the international community, she began to receive letters from distraught wives and mothers of German, Japanese and Italian P.O.W.'s. In her speech introducing the resolution, Mrs. Sampson read exerpts to the committee from these heart-wrenching letters. She knew that the most devastating harm caused by the Soviets' delay was not in the realm of international diplomacy, but rather in the daily lives of ordinary people. She felt that she had a responsibility to those people on many levels: as an individual, as an American and as a member of a people well-acquainted with oppression. She said,
I would add another reason for bringing the case here, a reason which appeals to me very personally. I believe we all have an obligation to express the moral sense of responsibility of the peoples in our respective countries. . . . They cannot be disinterested in what we, as their representatives, do about this human problem. Those who themselves have suffered and struggled hardest for their human rights will feel this situation most acutely. They know that the rights of all men are involved in the struggle for the rights of any group of men.37 (emphasis added).
Perhaps because of her experiences as a social worker and her extensive work with children, Edith Sampson spoke out on several occasions when she thought that the U.N. could promote children's welfare. Within a month of her appointment, she made an appeal for continuation of the U.S. advisory work in social welfare fields. At an important session of the Third Committee, she spoke out sharply against passage of a resolution favoring only temporary welfare assistance for needy children under the United Nations International Children's Endowment Fund (UNICEF) program.38
On another occasion, Mrs. Sampson proposed a resolution demanding the repatriation of Greek children who had been displaced and detained in neighboring countries during World War II. After the Iron Curtain closed around Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania, the unrepatriated Greek children were often lost to their families--no one knew where they were or whether they were alive or dead. With the exception of Yugoslavia, these countries were slow to get around to returning the Greek children to their homes and families. Using her social work knowledge of a child's need to live with its family and identify with its culture, Mrs. Sampson persuaded the committee to draft a resolution that would demand repatriation, set a compliance schedule for Albania and Bulgaria and provide for neutral International Red Cross observers.39
Beginning in early 1951, the State Department began sending Mrs. Sampson to various countries to give lectures on its behalf. She traveled to Germany and Austria in 1951, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, France and England in 1952, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Syria in 1955, and Venezuela, Columbia, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil in 1958. From the outset, it was clear that one of the reasons that she had been appointed was as a counter-propaganda move. Mrs. Sampson was described as "a bright symbol of the progress the United States has made in race relations--an eloquent example of the kind of opportunity that can come in a free society to anyone who serves whole-heartedly."40 The New York Times said that her appointment was "proposed by the State Department as a way of striking back at Soviet propaganda that Negroes are an oppressed people without opportunity, influence or position in the United States."41 The New York Herald Tribune said,
her appointment was recommended to President Truman by the State Department on two grounds: one, that she is eminently qualified; and two, that her appointment to a high post which there is no doubt she can fill capably will cut the legs from under Russian propaganda claims that Negroes are an oppressed people denied high office in the United States.42
News reports of the day seemed to take for granted the falsity of the "Russian propaganda claims." One article about Mrs. Sampson's appointment showed an amusing lack of irony when it went on to announce, "Only yesterday there was announced the formation of a high-level psychological warfare board to study means of refuting Russian propaganda lies and, while this move comes too quickly to be credited to the new agency, it is one of the types of action to be expected henceforth."43 Following that line of reasoning, if the State Department had only taken Communist propaganda more seriously, Cold War paranoia might have been the best thing to happen to African Americans in years!
More disturbing is that Mrs. Sampson's State Department speeches seem even more apologetic than her Town Hall tour speeches. For one thing, they are less critical of the treatment of blacks in American society and by the justice system. For example, of her talks in Austria, she said,
There were times when I had to bow my head in shame when talking about how some Negroes have been treated in the United States . . . . . But I could truthfully point out that these cases, bad as they are, are the exceptions--the Negro got justice for every one where justice was denied. I could tell them that Negroes have a greater opportunity in America to work out their salvation than anywhere else in the world.44
What did she mean? Millions of African Americans lived in daily realities that refuted her words. Mrs. Sampson came from a poor background, and she had spent years advocating as a social worker and as an attorney on behalf of poor people, most of whom were black. She could not have possibly been unaware of the level of oppression that African Americans were experiencing. Was she lying to protect America? Was she sugar-coating the truth because she was under orders from the State Department? Had she sold out her ideals, or was she simply deluded?
The answer is neither clear nor simple. First, Edith Sampson was not a woman who allowed others to push her around. When asked if Mrs. Sampson had been forced by the U.S. government to say things abroad that she didn't believe, her nephew had to control his laughter before he could respond, "Nobody forced Aunt Edith to do anything she didn't want to do."45 Repeatedly, when asked whether she was merely a token appointment, intended to serve as window-dressing, she responded, "The president did not ask me to represent six million Negroes, but 150 million Americans."46 If she was a token, she did not see herself that way.
Mrs. Sampson repeatedly refused to let others misconstrue her message. On one occasion, the president of the University of Vienna thanked her at the end of a speech and then said, "We are with you Negroes in your fight for full citizenship. And when you have won . . . , we hope that you will drape your mantles proudly over your shoulders and depart to your homeland." There was a pregnant silence, and then Mrs. Sampson drew herself up proudly and replied, "When we Negroes have achieved first-class citizenship in America, we will not drape our mantles over our shoulders and return anywhere--we are already there!"47 Another time, the editor of a Communist newspaper stood at the end of one of her talks and tried to pass off a diatribe as a question. She waited him out, answered him with a short "No," and without taking a breath, began to object to one of his statements, saying, "Now, tell me, darling . . ."48 The "darling" and the audience's laughter threw her inquisitor so far off balance that he did not try to challenge her again, and his paper did not run a story about Mrs. Sampson. These anecdotes of course do not prove anything about her motives, but they do show that Mrs. Sampson had something very specific to say, and she did not take kindly to attempts to skew it.
One can argue that Mrs. Sampson knew that the State Department had a message that it wanted her to deliver to the international community, but that at the same time, she had her own message. She saw her race as a factor that placed her in a unique position to influence both U.S. domestic policy and international relations. Looking at her U.N. career, one can see two dynamics.
First, Mrs. Sampson felt a strong responsibility to the people of developing countries. Most of these countries had only recently been colonies. She analogized their situations to that of the American slaves just after emancipation. She knew that Western nations had manipulated their colonies at every level--their political systems, economies, infrastructures and educational systems--to maximize their own gains regardless of what the people really needed. Because she believed that democracy was the best way to create a free, equitable society, she wanted to see these countries install it at the ground level.49 She knew that her race made it easier to approach and work with leaders who also had dark skin, and she took advantage of that opportunity.50 However, Communist ideology and rhetoric often sounded much more attractive to people who had been under their oppressors' heels for such a long time. As a strong individual, Mrs. Sampson felt that Communism did not give individuals enough freedom, and she wanted to warn the nascent nations of this. Because these people were wary of America's racial policies, she knew that she was fighting an uphill battle. She may have simply wanted the peoples of other nations to see past America's problems to the underlying beauty of a representative democracy and a free market.
Second, Mrs. Sampson obviously wanted to use America's image in the international community to manipulate or, if necessary, embarrass, the government into changing the way that it treated African Americans. Over and over, in lecture after lecture to a wide range of groups in the United States, she gave the following warning:
The millions of uncommitted people in the East, whom we need as partners for peace, are watching every move we make in America. You may not realize that these peoples represent two-thirds of the population of the world, and they are dark people. We need their help and co-operation. They are questioning our sincerity. They are of the opinion that the same discriminatory practices affecting Negroes in this country would affect them because of their color if they joined with America.51
Mrs. Sampson wanted to make America comprehend its own hypocrisy. She wanted Americans to understand that by practicing racism at home, they were threatening their own national security. She may have refrained from criticizing America's race problem abroad because she believed that it was more constructive to work to solve the problem at home. Alternatively, she may have been trying something more sophisticated. She might have been attempting to place America in a position where it would be forced by sheer political necessity to change its domestic policies to influence the emerging governments in developing countries.
There are sources that indicate that Mrs. Sampson was "bitterly criticized" from the time of the Town Hall tour on for her portrayal of American race relations in the international community.52 One editorial charged, "To label Edith Sampson a misleader and an opportunist is a kind and generous understatement."53 A column by journalist Marjorie McKenzie gave this opinion:
Last summer, from Austria, . . . France, Germany and especially Scandinavia, stories have continued to come over which charge that Mrs. Sampson distorted the position of the American Negro to her European audiences by minimizing his disadvantages and exaggerating his gains . . . . She must be dismayed that her expenditure of time and money and earnest good will has not resulted in more universal approval by Europeans or Negro Americans.54
Additionally, William Worthy, a writer for The Crisis, dedicated an article to Mrs. Sampson's misdeeds in 1952.55 In a 1955 interview, it seemed that Mrs. Sampson was becoming defensive, perhaps even bitter, about this criticism.56
C. Ending Her International Efforts
Mrs. Sampson was reappointed to the U.N. in 1952, and she continued to speak around the world and across America about the value of democracy and the need for America to practice what it preached, respectively. She served as a member-at-large of the U.S. Commission for UNESCO during the Eisenhower administration, and in 1961 and 1962, she was appointed to serve on the U.S. Commission on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, becoming the first black U.S. representative to NATO. In 1964 and 1965, she served as a member of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Private Enterprise in Foreign Aid.
Regardless of the U.S. government's ulterior motives in appointing her, Edith Sampson was highly regarded by the U.N. delegations on which she served. She worked extremely hard, often keeping an inhuman 20-hour, 7:00 am to 3:00 am schedule.57 One account of her U.N. days described her thus, "She works like a dynamo, talks like a pneumatic drill, and her warmth penetrates any room she enters." She was good friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, who respected her for her warmth and integrity.58 One commentator remarked,
Her generally frank, informal manner easily wins friends for her in diplomatic circles. She appreciates a gag and will tell and laugh loudest at a joke, even if it is on herself. She is a wonderful antidote for the stuffed shirt and the pretentious, being down-to-earth, and I feel, basically honest. Finally, she is, as she points out, at least "in there," often at great personal and financial sacrifice. The only question is, is this quite enough. I don't know the answer; it is possible that it is.59
It may be that Mrs. Sampson should not have been so easy on America. There could never be an excuse for the racist oppression that our government and society have promoted and/or condoned. However, by looking through the lens of Mrs. Sampson's convictions and the Cold War mentality that she obviously had as a product of her time, students of her life, should any others come along, may eventually understand what she was trying to do.
V. Taking the Bench: Mrs. Sampson's Judicial Career
In 1962, at an age where most people would probably retire, Mrs. Sampson decided to seek election as a judge on the Chicago Municipal Court. As a Democrat in Chicago at that time and as a friend of Mayor Richard Daley, she had no difficulty in being elected. Her nephew, a teenager at the time, remembers, "She sent me and my cousins to hand out flyers in the different voting districts, and we wondered what we were doing it for. Everyone we saw said they were already voting for her."60 Despite the ease with which she ascended to the bench, Mrs. Sampson was in fact the first black woman to be elected as a judge in the United States.
Her first judicial position was as an associate judge on the city's domestic court. Most of her cases were divorce, nonsupport and custody proceedings. From all descriptions, her manner on the bench was powerful, compelling and deeply personal. She paid close attention to the dynamics of each relationship, what was said and what was not said. She made it clear to all parties that her primary interest was not in carrying out the letter of the law, but in saving families. The proceedings in her courtroom were as much like negotiations and as little like adversarial battles as possible. At the end of one session, where she persuaded a husband and wife to attempt a trial reconciliation and undergo counseling, she told the couple, "I know what you're thinking. When we leave here it will begin all over again. Nothing has been changed. But there you're wrong. . . . Something has been added to both your lives--me."61 Though she tried to be understanding and broker solutions to problems, Mrs. Sampson also did not stand for chicanery on the part of those who appeared in her courtroom. Often, when a nonsupport defendant appeared in her court and claimed that he didn't have any money, she would order him to get out his wallet and give everything in it to his ex-wife. However, she also displayed her sense of humor. One time, she told an ex-wife, "Give him five dollars back. He looks like he needs a drink."62
Mrs. Sampson sought election again in 1966, this time winning a seat on the Circuit Court of Cook County. She heard landlord-tenant disputes and cut down her court's backlogged docket by disposing of 10,000 cases per year.63 By this time, most people perceived her as an understanding but tough grandmother. In a court where all of the tenants appearing before her were poor (75% were black), she said, "This is their Supreme Court. . . . If they don't get justice here, they won't have it at all."64 Although she moved cases through quickly, she paid attention to the parties. If she perceived that a tenant was willing but unable to pay the rent, she tried to find a solution that would keep the person from being evicted. If she thought that a tenant was holding back despite his ability to pay, she would not hesitate to evict. If she saw a tenant with a sick child or some other problem, she would notice it and refer the person to appropriate social service agencies. Interestingly, one of the grounds that she gave for refusing to evict tenants in the late 1960s was that racial tensions were too high in the neighborhoods where they lived, and she did not want to set off a conflagration.65
Mrs. Sampson retired from the bench in 1978. The following year, she died. Although Mrs. Sampson's career as a judge was not as exotic as her career as an international peace broker, it does speak well of her. First, she did not have to keep working as long as she did, but she loved her work. Secondly, she really cared about justice, not the law for its own sake. She knew that the law for its own sake did not help people who were in difficult straits. She cared about the people who appeared in her court, and she did her best to arrive at the right result. Perhaps after so many frustrating years spent trying to achieve domestic and international peace on a huge scale, the opportunity to affect peace on a smaller scale was just what she needed to feel fulfilled.
VI. Conclusion and Further Direction
Mrs. Sampson deserves more attention. Not only did she have a remarkable, full life, but she labored throughout her career to make the world a better place. She may not have had what we view as the correct attitude about how to fight racism and oppression, but it would be arrogant to write her off for that. To some extent, she was a product of her time. More importantly, if she made a mistake, it was that she overestimated the American conscience. Someday, we as a nation might be able to live up to her expectations.
Obviously, this outline of Edith Sampson's life is just a surface attempt to collect and summarize the readily available information about her in one document. To delve deeper into Mrs. Sampson's life and career, it would be essential to look at her personal papers, which are on file at Radcliffe College's Schlesinger Library of the History of Women in America. They do not circulate, and they are not on microfilm. There seem to be many rather full boxes. I have obtained a "finding aid" from Schlesinger that catalogues the contents of the papers, and from which requests for photocopies may be made. I will leave it with Professor Barbara Babcock for anyone who wants to do further research about Mrs. Sampson. The finding aid remarks, "The bulk of the collection pertains to Sampson's activities as a judge, especially her election campaigns, and to her other professional and volunteer work, particularly her trips to Europe on behalf of the State Department and her work with the United Nations. There is little about her personal life or her work as a lawyer." The papers could shed light on a variety of things, including the lives and work of other black women attorneys in her day, who her mentors were, whether she had any enemies, what she did as a NATO member, why she decided to run for a judgeship, how she felt about the civil rights struggle as it developed in the 1960s and much more. It is easy to speculate about uncharted territory.
Other sources that would be useful for a biographer are Mrs. Sampson's surviving family members. Questions that they would be particularly helpful in addressing include Mrs. Sampson's real birth date, why and when Edith and Rufus Sampson divorced, and how she really felt about her portrayal of America's race problem to the international community. Mrs. Sampson had a profound influence on many of her nieces and nephews, who saw her as a third parent. She may have communicated a lot of things about her general world view to them.
Two of her nephews are judges. The Hon. Charles T. Spurlock, who inherited his aunt's papers, is a Suffolk County Superior Court judge in Boston. He is very easy to talk to and more than willing to answer questions. His brother, Oliver Spurlock, is a night judge on the Chicago Narcotics Court. He is probably equally willing to talk about his aunt. These two men can also help in terms of contacting other family members. One person in particular who could provide an interesting perspective is Jean Spurlock, Mrs. Sampson's niece. She is the first African American woman to serve as the dean of an American Medical School--Meharry Medical College in Tennessee. Additionally, Mrs. Sampson's great-niece, Lynne Moody, is the actress who played Alex Haley's great-great grandmother in the television miniseries, Roots.
Finally, as footnote 52, supra, mentions, there are many unanswered questions about Mrs. Sampson's critics. Marguerite Cartwright's Negro History Bulletin article refers to an abundance of virulent criticism during Mrs. Sampson's time with the U.N., but I could not find any articles besides her own. In addition to William Worthy's article in The Crisis (referenced in footnote 55), there must have been newspaper editorials, letters to the editor, perhaps even political cartoons that would clarify how much criticism Mrs. Sampson faced, from whom it came and for which aspects of her activities. Mrs. Sampson may have even kept a clipping file and left it in her papers.
Hopefully, others will be inspired to study Edith Sampson further. She was a fascinating person, and her life deserves the scholarly attention.
Timeline: Edith Spurlock Sampson
| 1898A | Born in Pittsburgh |
| 1914? | Graduated from high school, enrolled in the New York School of Social Work. |
| 1917? | Finished undergraduate degree in
social work, married Rufus Sampson, moved to Chicago
|
| 1922 | Enrolled in night program at the John Marshall Law School. Worked full-time during the day. |
| 1925 | Graduated from law school. Failed the Illinois bar exam. |
| 1927 | Completed L.L.M. Degree at Loyola
University School of Law, the first woman to receive a
graduate law degree from the school.
|
| c. 1922-1934 | Divorced Rufus Sampson. |
| c. 1927-1945 | Mrs. Sampson's sister died, leaving her with custody of two children. |
| 1934 | Married Joseph Clayton, who joined
her law practice.
|
| 1938 | With Georgia Jones Ellis, admitted to membership in the National Association of Women Lawyers, breaking its color line. |
| 1947 | Appointed assistant state's attorney in Cook County |
| 1949 | Participated in world tour as part
of America's Town Hall of the Air radio program,
representing the National Association of Negro Women.
Addressed questions about American racial policies in
numerous countries.
|
| 1950 | Toured all over America speaking
about the effects of domestic racism on American
international diplomacy, particularly on the fight
against Communism.
|
| 1951 | Helped to obtain passage of a
resolution to pressure the Soviet Union into repatriating
its prisoners of war.
|
| 1952 | Reappointed to the U.S. delegation
to the U.N.
|
| 1955 | Traveled to Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Syria for the State Department. |
| 1958 | Traveled to Venezuela, Columbia,
Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil for the State
Department.
|
| 1959 | Joseph Clayton died. |
| 1962 | Ran for and won judicial
seat on Chicago Municipal Court. Became first black woman
elected judge in the U.S.
|
| 1966 | Elected judge on Cook
County Circuit Court.
|
| 1978 | Retired from the bench. |
| 1979 | Died. |
A. Mrs. Sampson was not entirely truthful about her age to reporters. In 1950, when she attained international fame, she told the press that she was 49. However, because her younger brother was born in 1900, she could not have been that young. Her nephew, the younger brother's son, guesses that his aunt's birthday must have been around 1898.
Marguerite Cartwright, The United Nations and the U.S. Negro, 18 NEGRO HIST. BULL. 148 (March 1955).
Edith Sampson: U.S. Alternate Delegate, United Nations, 1950-1953, in NEGROES IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND GOVERNMENT 38 (Walter Christmas ed., 1966).
Edith Sampson Goes To Austria, EBONY, Oct. 1951, at 80.
Max Gilstrap, First Negro Woman to Represent U.S., CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR, Sept. 19, 1950, at 12.
Dale Kramer, America's Newest Diplomat, NEW REPUBLIC, Jan. 22, 1951, at 15.
Lady Lawyers: 70 Carry On Battle For Sex And Race Equality in Courts, EBONY, Aug. 1947, at 18.
Gloria Marrow, Sampson, Edith (1901-1979), in BLACK WOMEN IN AMERICA: AN HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA 1002 (Darlene Clark Hine ed., 1993).
KAREN MORELLO, THE INVISIBLE BAR: THE WOMAN LAWYER IN AMERICA 1638 TO THE PRESENT (1986). See particularly the chapter about black women in the legal profession.
The Negro Woman in Politics, EBONY, Aug. 1966, at 96.
Negro Woman Lawyer Slated To Be a U.S. Delegate to U.N., N.Y. HERALD TRIB., Aug. 19, 1950, at A1.
Dianne M. Pinderhughes, Edith S. Sampson, in NOTABLE BLACK AMERICAN WOMEN 969 (Jessie Carney Smith ed., 1992).
J.D. Ratcliff, Edith Sampson, Thorn In Russia's Side, UNITED NATIONS WORLD, March 1951, at 24.
J.D. Ratcliff, Justice--Edith Sampson Style, READER'S DIGEST, Nov. 1968, at 167.
Eleanor Roosevelt, Some of My Best Friends Are Negroes, EBONY, Feb. 1953, at 20.
Edith S. Sampson, Choose One of Five: It's Your Life, 31 VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY 661 (Aug. 15, 1966).
Edith S. Sampson, Equal Opportunity--Equal Responsibility, 23 VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY 519 (June 15, 1957).
Edith S. Sampson, I Like America, NEGRO DIGEST, Dec. 1950, at 3.
Edith S. Sampson, Impartial Commission To Investigate the Prisoners of War Question, 24 U.S. DEP'T ST. BULL. 68 (Jan. 8, 1951).
Edith S. Sampson, Show the East How the Freedom Revolution Works, 17 VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY 272 (Feb. 15, 1951).
Edith S. Sampson, Statement by Mrs. Edith Sampson, U.S. Representative to the General Assembly, 29 U.S. DEPT. ST. BULL. 296 (Aug. 31, 1953).
Edith S. Sampson, What Price Cicero? NEGRO DIGEST, Nov. 1951, at 30.
Edith S. Sampson, World Security Begins At Home, 43 J. HOME ECON. 516 (Sept. 1951).
Sampson, Edith S., in DIGEST OF WOMEN LAWYERS AND JUDGES 300 (Laura Miller Derry ed., 1949).
Sampson, Mrs. Edith S., in CURRENT BIOGRAPHY 511 (1950).
Andrew Schiller, People in Trouble, HARPER'S MAGAZINE, April 1964, at 145.
U.N. Delegate Post for Negro Woman, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 19, 1950, at A1.
Note: In case I have overlooked any useful readily available sources, it might be helpful to look in an bibliographical index called In Black And White. This source lists materials by and about African Americans and seemingly includes every article that even remotely mention the subject's name. Citations in this index that I located too late to obtain the articles from Interlibrary Loan are the following (authors and titles not known):
29 INDEPENDENT WOMAN 365 (Dec. 1950),
57 THE CRISIS 577 (Oct. 1950), and
OUR WORLD, Feb. 1951, at 24.
Endnotes
1 Shirley Henderson, Phenomenal Poet: For Maya Angelou, Success if Picking up the Burden, Not Letting Pain Trip You Up, CHI. TRIB., Oct. 23, 1994, Womanews section, at 8.
2 J.D. Ratcliff, Justice--Edith Sampson Style, READER'S DIGEST, Nov. 1968, at 170.
3 1901 is the "official" date, but this does not seem to be possible. One of her nephews says that his father, Mrs. Sampson's younger brother, was born in 1900. Telephone Interview with the Hon. Charles T. Spurlock, Mrs. Sampson's nephew (May 5, 1997). Also, when considering her age during her early career, an 1898 birthdate makes more sense. For instance, if she graduated from law school in 1925, she would have been 24 if born in 1901, but 27 if born in 1898. Because she married and moved to Chicago no less than three years after finishing high school, then she took graduate social work courses and worked for a few years in Chicago before beginning law school, it would have been difficult (albeit not impossible) to have done these things and finished three years of law school by the time she was 24. For this reason, it would be helpful to know how old she was when she finished high school. Finally, Mrs. Sampson did not really rise to international fame until 1950. This seems to be the first time that reporters mentioned her age. If she was 52, she may have preferred to have the public believe that she was 49. In fact, at least once, she gave her age as 49 in 1951, when she could not possibly have been 49. J.D. Ratcliff, Edith Sampson, Thorn In Russia's Side, UNITED NATIONS WORLD, March 1951, at 24.
4 Newspaper accounts often mention that in her speaking engagements abroad, Mrs. Sampson would speak about growing up in a poor family. However, she characterized her parents as very proud, self-reliant people, an image that the word "slum" tends to obscure.
5 J.D. Ratcliff, Edith Sampson, Thorn in Russia's Side, UNITED NATIONS WORLD, March 1951, at 25.
6 Dianne M. Pinderhughes, Edith S. Sampson, in NOTABLE BLACK AMERICAN WOMEN 969 (Jessie Carney Smith ed., 1992).
7 Edith S. Sampson, I Like America, NEGRO DIGEST, December, 1950, at 6.
8 Telephone Interview with the Hon. Charles T. Spurlock, Mrs. Sampson's nephew (May 5, 1997).
9 Max Gilstrap, First Negro Woman to Represent U.S., CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR, Sept. 19, 1950, at 12.
11 Although this is speculation, perhaps the Sampsons divorced in 1922, when Edith started law school, or at some time during law school. If Edith was still married to Rufus while she was in law school, she probably rarely saw him because of her schedule, which may have been an aggravating factor. Though it does not seem fair to relegate Rufus Sampson to a footnote, nothing more is known about him by any source I could locate, including Mrs. Sampson's own nephew. It would be interesting to know why and when this first marriage failed.
12 Charles Spurlock interview, supra note 8.
15 Lady Lawyers: 70 Carry On Battle for Sex and Race Equality in Courts, EBONY, Aug. 1947, at 19.
21 Ratcliff, supra note 5, at 25.
23 Dale Kramer, America's Newest Diplomat, NEW REPUBLIC, Jan. 22, 1951, at 15.
25 Ratcliff, supra note 5, at 25.
26 334 U.S. 1, 68 S.Ct. 725 (1948). In that case, the Court held that racially discriminatory restrictive covenants on parcels of real estate were void.
27 The John Marshall Law School, A TRIBUTE TO THE HON. EDITH S. SAMPSON, 1901-1979 (1979).
28 The name of the hotel is never mentioned in the sources.
29 Gloria V. Marrow, Sampson, Edith (1901-1979), in BLACK WOMEN IN AMERICA: AN HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA 1002, 1003 (Darlene Clark Hine ed., 1993).
30 Sampson, I Like America, supra note 7, at 8.
31 Gilstrap, supra note 9, at 12.
32 Kramer, supra note 23, at 16.
33 Ratcliff, supra note 5, at 25.
34 Edith S. Sampson, Show the East How the Freedom Revolution Works, 17 VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY 272 (Feb. 15, 1951).
37 Edith S. Sampson, Impartial Commission to Investigate the Prisoners of War Question, 24 U.S. DEP'T ST. BULL. 68, 69 (Jan. 8, 1951).
38 Edith Sampson: U.S. Alternate Delegate, United Nations 1950-1953, in NEGROES IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND GOVERNMENT 38, 39 (Walter Christmas ed., 1966).
39 Edith Sampson, Statement by Mrs. Edith Sampson, U.S. Representative to the General Assembly, 29 U.S. DEP'T ST. BULL. 296, 297 (Aug. 31, 1953).
40 Gilstrap, supra note 9, at 12.
41 U.N. Delegate Post For Negro Woman, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 19, 1950, at A1.
42 Negro Woman Lawyer Slated To Be a U.S. Delegate to U.N., N.Y. HERALD TRIB., Aug. 19, 1950, at A1.
44 Edith Sampson Goes to Austria, EBONY, Oct. 1951, at 80-81.
45 Charles Spurlock interview, supra note 8.
46 Marrow, supra note 29, at 1003.
47 Edith Sampson Goes to Austria at 82.
49 In fact, Mrs. Sampson had an idea that was not unlike later proposals for the Peace Corps. She wanted to send "Freedom Ships" to ports in Asia and Africa, and from those ships, dispatch "modern trucks which are streamlined mobile units of technical assistance." Her vision was an interracial corps of American citizens who provide grass-roots level education and assistance in agriculture, medicine, technology and small industry in developing countries, thus strengthening regional economies and infrastructures. Sampson, Freedom Revolution, supra note 34, at 275.
50 E.g., Kramer, supra note 23, at 15.
51 Edith S. Sampson, World Security Begins at Home, 43 J. HOME ECON. 516, 517 (Sept. 1951).
52 Marguerite Carwright, The United Nations and the U.S. Negro, 18 NEGRO HIST. BULL. 148, 133 (March 1955). There must be a number of scattered letters and editorials in newspapers of the day expressing this opposition that are yet unearthed. Such commentary would be extremely valuable. See section VI, "Conclusion and Further Directions," infra.
53 Cartwright at 133, quoting Thomas J. Gates of St. Louis.
55 Id. The article mentioned is William Worthy, In Cloud-Cuckoo Land, 59 CRISIS 226-230 (Apr. 1952). Worthy's article could not be obtained by the time this paper was due. Although The Crisis is held by the Hoover Institute Library at Stanford University, the library did not have it for 1952. Worthy's opinions would obviously add much to this discussion.
56 Cartwright, supra note 52, at 134.
57 Kramer, supra note 23, at 15.
58 Eleanor Roosevelt, Some of My Best Friends Are Negroes, EBONY, Feb. 1953, at 21. Mrs. Roosevelt recalled that Mrs. Sampson once sent her an urgent letter from Scandinavia, where she had just discovered that a publisher had issued a reprint of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Mrs. Sampson was distraught and wanted to know how she could explain to the Scandinavians that Uncle Tom was dead. Mrs. Roosevelt responded, "Uncle Tom is dead, but we will have to live with the book the rest of our mortal lives." Id.
59 Cartwright, supra note 52, at 134.
60 Charles Spurlock interview, supra note 8.
61 Andrew Schiller, People in Trouble, HARPER'S MAGAZINE, Apr., 1964, at 157.
62 Ratcliff, Justice--Edith Sampson Style, supra note 2, at 174.
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