Growing up in a working-class Detroit household, Marilyn Kelly originally set her career sights on teaching, earning a BA from Eastern Michigan University and a master’s degree from Middlebury College in Vermont. While still in her 20s, Ms. Kelly won election to the State Board of Education and then began pursuing a law degree. Attending Wayne State University School of Law in the 1960s, she was just one of six women in her class. Elected to the Michigan Court of Appeals in 1988 and the Michigan Supreme Court in 1996, she became Chief Justice 13 years later, holding the position until 2010.

Included among her many honors is a lifetime achievement award from the ACLU of Michigan. The Detroit and Michigan Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild has honored her for a "life dedicated to justice and equality” and Michigan Lawyers Weekly named her "Woman of the Year” in 2012. Now the Distinguished Jurist in Residence at the Wayne State University Law School, she recently talked with us about her personal journey, the state of the women’s movement, her admiration for Madam C.J. Walker and more as part of our Women’s History Month activities.

Q: As a young person, what did you see as the horizons open to you?

A: The horizons were not high. Most women in my generation were told they should be homemakers and mothers. If they wanted to work outside the home, they might want to be a teacher, secretary, nurse or an airline stewardess. That was about it. In high school, when I was given vocational counseling, I was never urged to look into anything else. In fact, I was discouraged from considering any other profession. And that was typical at that time.

Q: Did that limit your dreams?

A: It definitely limited my dreams. I had always been enthralled by books of adventurous travel . Books about going to the arctic or into the jungle. Things like that. But women didn’t seem to get to do those things, and it seemed so unfair to me. Then, when I was maybe 15 or 16, I read an autobiography written by a woman marine biologist named Eugenie Clark, who was able to go scuba diving in all these places around the world to study marine life. I thought it was the most exciting thing I’d ever heard of. Eugenie got her first big job when she was hired by an employer in some far-off place who mistook her name for Eugene and thought he was hiring a man. When she arrived, he realized his mistake, but it was too late. And that is how she got her foot in the door.

Q: So, you initially went into teaching because that was one of the few options you thought was available to you?

A: Teaching did interest me, but it wasn’t my first choice. And, ultimately, I couldn’t see spending my entire life doing that. So, I began looking for other things.

Q: How did you end up going to law school and becoming a lawyer?

A: I sort of stumbled into that. When I was in my 20s, President Kennedy had been assassinated, but his words were still ringing in my ears: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." So, I got active in the local political party in Albion, where I was teaching. Then a new state Constitution was adopted that, among other things, expanded the number of people serving on the state Board of Education, and I thought, “Why not me?” So, I ran and, much to the consternation of the editors at the Grand Rapids Press, I was elected to a statewide office at the age of 26. That certainly shaped my future. I began learning about the law because of the legal issues we were dealing with as a board. And I started thinking how really interesting the law was, which led me to decide to leave teaching and go to law school. It wasn’t a planned thing.

Q: Do you consider yourself a feminist?

A: Yes

Q: How would you define that?

A: I view myself as a human being on par with other human beings, male or female, and that gender shouldn’t determine my destiny. I also believe that in our society women have been discriminated against, and that discrimination has to be ended.

Q: When you went to law school at Wayne State University, there were only six women in your class. Did you feel like you were discriminated against?

A: Not while in law school. I was well-treated there. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I’m teaching there now – to give back to the university. But when I got into the legal profession, I definitely ran into discrimination. There were almost no women judges, and few women advocates. The women licensed to practice law back then were mostly relegated to work that took place behind the scenes. They did important work, but that work was not recognized. Women lawyers did not receive the same pay as men, and weren’t elevated to partnerships the way men were in the large and important law firms. There were few role models back then, and that made it harder for us to succeed, because we didn’t know how to pattern our behavior.

Men weren’t accustomed to women being their peers, or their superiors. For many men, that was a very difficult concept.

Q: How would you describe the state of the women’s movement today?

A: Things have changed greatly. Teaching at the law school, I have an opportunity to get to know young women who are becoming lawyers, and I see the jobs that are available to them, the partnerships available to them at the large firms. They feel empowered to take chances regarding what they do professionally. They feel they need to be respected, and that their views deserve to be heard. They expect to be treated as equals, and are willing to fight for that. And they’re going out into a world where men are more accustomed to working with women. That all represents a very large change. The atmosphere today is much better than what I experienced 50 years ago.

Q: What about for Black women and other women of color?

A: I think the situation for them remains discouraging. I’ve seen how much more difficult it is for them to advance professionally than it now is for white women. Their plight is different, obviously, because they must deal with racism as well as sexism. And changing that, with white women joining in solidarity, remains the next frontier in the women’s movement.

Q: Any recommendations regarding what people should be looking at during Women’s History Month?

A: One woman who’s an incredible inspiration is Madam C.J. Walker, an entrepreneur, activist and philanthropist who was born on a plantation in the 1860s and went on to become the first Black woman to be a millionaire. There are several good documentaries that tell her story. There’s also a dramatized series about her life, titled Self Made, that people can also watch.

Q: Is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to express?

A: I’d like to say it is a good thing that we are celebrating Women’s History Month. It’s appropriate. This battle for women’s equality isn’t totally won. It is necessary for men and women alike to learn from history, and to see what women have been able to overcome to this point, and to understand the challenges that remain for women – all women – to be treated the same as men.

 

By Ria Tabacco Mar

In February, Ketanji Brown Jackson made history by being the first Black woman nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. In accepting the nomination, Judge Jackson paid homage to Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to serve as a federal judge, with whom Judge Jackson shares a birthday.

Listening to Judge Jackson’s remarks, there was another great lawyer I wished were alive to see this achievement: Pauli Murray.

In 1971, Murray wrote a letter to President Nixon purporting to apply for a seat on the Supreme Court. “I am a Negro woman 60 years old,” Murray wrote. (Though Murray identified as a woman in the letter, Murray often expressed a male gender identity; not knowing what pronouns Murray would use today if given a choice, I use Murray’s name instead.) The letter continued:

“It should be of passing interest that I represent the largest group of minority status in the United States — namely, female. The Court would be more representative of the composition and interests of the population of the United States if a qualified woman were appointed. My application is to forestall the popular misconception that no qualified women applied or are available.”

One of the greatest legal minds of the 20th century, Murray was not widely known outside legal circles until recently. While still a law student at Howard University, Murray argued that separate was inherently unequal, work that formed the basis for the landmark victory in Brown v. Board of Education. Murray was among the first to theorize that the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under law, the premise of the Brown decision, could be used to challenge laws that discriminated based not only on race, but also on sex.

That work formed the foundation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s advocacy during her years as director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, as Ginsburg herself acknowledged repeatedly. Murray also served the ACLU on its national Board of Directors and as part of an advisory committee guiding its women’s rights work and was a co-founder of the National Organization for Women. The letter to President Nixon recounts none of these accomplishments (some of which admittedly did not happen until later), condensing them into a single sentence: “I am a Constitutional lawyer whose specialty is human rights.”

Murray knew, of course, that one does not “apply” to be a justice of the Supreme Court. That was an unspoken rule, alongside another implicit requirement: being a white man. Today, there have been 115 justices, 108 of them white men.

At the time of Murray’s letter, only white men had been tapped to serve on the high court. In fact, a single Black woman — Constance Baker Motley — had been nominated to any federal court in the country. Judge Motley faced unique barriers as a Black woman. President Lyndon B. Johnson initially hoped to nominate her to a seat on the prestigious Second Circuit Court of Appeals vacated by Thurgood Marshall when he was elevated to the Supreme Court. Marshall had been confirmed three times by that point — first as Solicitor General and then again for each court on which he sat.

But senators objected to the idea of Judge Motley, a Black woman, in such an influential post. Without key votes, President Johnson nominated her for a district court judgeship instead. Judge Motley faced obstacles on the bench as well, as litigants questioned her ability to be impartial and called for her recusal in civil rights cases. That Murray decided to write to President Nixon in the first place reflects the ugly history of discrimination faced by Black women like Judge Motley.

Yet Murray’s letter manages to hold complexity. It is simultaneously cutting and deeply funny, opening with a referral to Murray’s cardiologist as proof of physical heartiness. The letter goes on to point out that Murray’s nomination would sail through the vetting process — because Murray’s activism had already been subject to FBI surveillance.

Murray’s many gifts to us include not only legal brilliance but humor and joy. I often tell my team in the Women’s Rights Project to think like Pauli Murray. This Women’s History Month, my hope is that we can laugh like Murray did, too.

Ria Tabacco Mar is director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project.

Following a white militia member’s killing of two protestors and the wounding of a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year, ACLU Racial Justice Program staff attorney Leah Watson and her team spent months investigating exactly what happened and how the Kenosha Police Department and the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department put protesters in harm's way. We invited Ms. Watson to walk us through the painstaking investigation and what she and her team uncovered.

Along with reviewing more than 800 records and 50 hours of video footage obtained through months of relentless legal effort, the team also conducted more than 40 interviews with community members to fully understand what happened. As explained in a blog by Ms. Watson, this is what they found:

“On the night of August 25, law enforcement not only failed to protect protestors calling for police accountability and more humane treatment of Black people, but actively put them in harm’s way. Officers enabled and encouraged predominantly white, right-wing armed civilians and militia groups that night, creating a situation in which tensions escalated and people were killed.”

Noting the nationwide surge of violent white supremacist groups, Ms. Watson pointed out that Michigan is a state where vigilance is especially needed because of its long history as a militia hotbed. Ms. Watson also connected the dots linking a newly emboldened militia movement to another area of her work: Protecting a public education system that promotes inclusion, diversity, critical thinking, and fact-based teaching, even when those facts make some people uncomfortable.

“The core principals are the same,” Ms. Watson explained. “There is a concern for preserving the role of white supremacy across these institutions at the expense of constitutional freedoms.”

Throughout the country, fierce attempts are underway to ban books, prevent the teaching of our nation’s racism, past and present, and to censor educators. In one school district Language Arts teachers were ordered to not use the words “white supremacy” or “diversity. The response from Ms. Watson and her colleagues was to file a lawsuit that is still underway. “I think it's all part of a backlash into what seemed like might be an opening for racial justice following the killing of George Floyd,” said Ms. Watson.

People fearful of losing their long-held white privilege are pushing back as hard as ever, in a multitude of ways.

“Combatting that threat begins with vigilance and zealous protection of constitutional rights for all, including those protesting police brutality or learning about race and gender in schools,” said Ms. Watson “In order to address systemic racism, we must first acknowledge and talk about it.”

And then you fight it with all the resources you can muster, as Ms. Watson and others at the ACLU are doing.