Judiciary. Judge Phyllis Kravitch

• Author: Anne Emanuel
• Pages: 12-13

LITIGATION 12

JUDICIARY

Judge Phyllis

Kravitch

ANNE EMANUEL

The author, professor emerita at Georgia State

University College of Law and author of Elbert

Parr Tuttle: Chief Jurist of the Civil Rights Revo-

lution (2011), completed an oral history of Judge

Kravitch for the ABA Women Trailblazers Project

in 2013 (available online).

Judge Phyllis Kravitch graduated from the

University of Pennsylvania Law School in

1943. She stood near the top of her class and

was an editor of the law review. And yet,

she not only did not receive any job offers—

she did not even garner any job interviews.

Edwin Keedy, the law school’s dean,

asked her permission to send her résumé to

a firm that he thought was open to hiring a

woman. The firm was—but Kravitch sound-

ed Jewish, and that was another matter.

Dean Keedy then suggested she apply

for a clerkship. She did, but no circuit

court judges offered her an interview.

She did interview with one district court

judge who told her that he had no objec-

tion to a woman law clerk and that if he

could not find a qualified male, he would

hire her. She also had one interview at

the U.S. Supreme Court. But there had

never been a female clerk on the Supreme

Court, and even Justice Frank Murphy—

who while attorney general founded the

forerunner to the Justice Department’s

Civil Rights Division—hesitated to break

with that precedent.

So Phyllis returned to Savannah, where

her father—Aaron Kravitch—maintained a

small general practice. As soon as she ar-

rived, he had her join him in court. The

next day, the presiding judge called to

tell him that every lawyer who had seen

her complained, and the judge agreed—

a courtroom was no place for a woman.

Find work for her in the office, he directed.

Aaron Kravitch heard him out and replied

bluntly: “She’s been admitted to practice

and the men will just have to get used to it.”

He was right; they did have to get

used to it, as over the next few decades

Phyllis and her father handled major cas-

es of both political and economic grav-

ity. At a time when few white lawyers in

the South would represent black clients,

they did. In 1946, they successfully repre-

sented a group of Savannah’s prominent

black citizens seeking to register to vote

in Democratic primaries. The next time

Phyllis attended a bar association lun-

cheon, she found herself alone at a table

for eight. Among their other black clients

was Myers Anderson, whose grandson

Clarence Thomas now sits on the U.S.

Supreme Court.