In Memory of Professor Derrick Bell Foreword

• Publication year: 2013

Washington Law ReviewVolume 36, No. 3, SPRING 2013

IN MEMORY OF PROFESSOR DERRICK BELL Foreword

Janet Dewart Bell

First and foremost, Derrick Bell was a marvelous human being- wondrously made, intensely passionate, extraordinarily giving. While there are many who can attest to these qualities from their own personal experiences with Derrick, I would like to share some observations from having been privileged to share with him the last twenty years of his life.

The articles in this symposium are fitting tributes to his legacy and valuable contributions to Derrick's memory. I thank each of the authors for their insights and for taking the time to share them so thoughtfully and graciously. To the authors: you do Derrick proud not only by your articles in this law review, but also by your dedication to doing the work to which he committed his life. Derrick's life was one of service and commitment to justice-not as an abstract concept, but as a worthy goal to which he gave his all.

From humble beginnings in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he attended the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, serving as an associate editor of the law review with Richard Thornburgh, the Republican former attorney general and Governor of Pennsylvania. He and Dick remained cordial over the years, even after their life and political paths diverged. Race was a defining difference in their outcomes. Their virtually equal success in law school did not prevent Derrick from being denied a position at white law firms in Pittsburgh. Derrick often said that he hoped he would have chosen to be a civil rights lawyer even if he had been offered the same associate positions as his white classmates. He did not have a choice. The hiring partner of one law firm told Derrick, somewhat sadly, that they “never had a Negro” in the firm and they were not ready to start with him. Rather than becoming bitter, Derrick set off on a different path-a path from which those of us who believe in freedom and social justice have benefited enormously.

As a pioneering civil rights attorney working on the frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement, Derrick supervised over 300 school desegregation cases, working with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and such stellar lawyers as Robert L. Carter and Constance Baker Motley. Both of these legal giants were his mentors and became lifelong friends. He also became the first executive director of the Western Center on Law and Poverty at the University of California Law School.

While he succeeded at these earlier endeavors, it was as a law teacher where Derrick found his calling. Derrick became the first tenured African-American professor at the Harvard Law School, a position he famously relinquished in protest of the lack of faculty diversity, specifically its failure to tenure women of color. He was also the Dean of the University of Oregon School of Law, one of the first African-Americans to hold a deanship at a predominately white law school. He resigned from that position when the school refused to hire an eminently qualified Asian-American woman.

Derrick had a fierce intellect and was a scholar of the first order; however, he did not let that get in the way of his learning or that of his students. He knew, as Paulo Freire knew, that there is, or should be, a synergy between students and teachers, each contributing to their shared learning experience. Derrick's pedagogy of “participatory learning” empowered and energized students. Derrick loved “his students,” not in a possessive and restrictive way, but in a compassionate and encouraging way. Students appreciated being in Derrick's orbit. They welcomed and understood his role as mentor.

Bell's students were encouraged to think for themselves, to write prolifically, to engage in rigorous intellectual discourse, to take a stand whether it was popular or not, and to bring out the best in each other. These values form the core of Derrick's teaching and his legacy to the thousands of students he taught throughout his over forty-year teaching career.

Derrick's philosophical approach to his students also characterizes our marriage. Knowing Derrick made me a better person. But if the truth be told and it should be: all was not serious with us. Derrick loved to listen to good music of all kinds, to dance, and to tell corny quotes. In contrast to what some would like to paint as a somber and solemn existence, Derrick-and I-enjoyed a full and glorious life, even while staying committed to The Struggle. I often say that Derrick made struggle attractive. He could joke and laugh-at human foibles in general and at him-self in particular. His sly but gentle humor was a lifeline to him and to those around him.

During his extensive academic career, Derrick wrote prodigiously, integrating legal scholarship with parables, allegories, and personal reflections that illuminated some of America's most profound inequalities, particularly around the pervasive racism permeating much of American law and society. Derrick is considered a founder of Critical Race Theory, which engages questions of race and racism in the law, investigating how even those legal institutions purporting to remedy racism can profoundly entrench it.

As a professor, Derrick challenged himself to let go of rigid teaching methods and to trust in the ability and willingness of students to try innovative techniques while accomplishing sophisticated and complex work. He did not let students flail alone in deep water; he was there for them, all hours of the day and night. He helped students find their first legal service jobs, their associate positions at law firms, their first teaching experiences. He took the time to write thousands of letters of recommendation. His personal support and encouragement are legendary.

How did he get this way? He had the examples of his working class parents who instilled in him and his three younger siblings a rigorous work ethic and a drive to confront authority. He also had grounding in the cultural traditions of African-American spirituality and its belief, vision, and hope. He loved African-American spirituals and gospel music, within which “dwells the stuff of miracles.” His first wife, Jewel Hair-ston Bell, was a remarkable woman; her wise counsel and steadfast loyalty matched Derrick's gentleness, tenacity, and drive. She was his partner for thirty years, until her death in 1990. I met Derrick shortly thereafter. Our marriage, too, was a sacred trust and a loving partnership.

Derrick loved teaching and his students so much that he struggled to get to class, even in what we now know to have been his last days. He taught the week before his death.

Several themes emerge from the writings in this volume. Probably the biggest is Derrick's humanity and kindness, his ability to reach out and bring people into the circle of institutions-people whom the roadblocks of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia tried to keep out. For many people of all races in the academy, particularly women and people of color in law schools, Derrick was a source of inspiration and aspiration. Because he was, they could be. Because he cared so much, there indeed was hope.

Another theme, of course, is Derrick's unwavering belief in students. His Harvard protest was to support student demands for diversity. His earlier decision to resign as Dean of the University of Oregon School of Law was because of his deep belief that the students were entitled to have qualified, diverse faculty.

Derrick understood the parallels between his work as a civil rights attorney and his support for student demands for diversity. He did not protest for the sake of protesting. Nor did he shy away from taking principled, sometimes public and controversial, stands. He lived his life with dignity and passion. His books, particularly Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth, contain the moral and ethical bases for his exemplary life and his challenges to the status quo.

Derrick's scholarship contributions form another theme and include his casebook Race, Racism, and American Law; the development of Critical Race Theory for which he is regarded as a founding father; and his Big Bang theory of “interest convergence.”

Since Derrick's death in October 2011, academia has graciously honored him with some very special and lovely awards. One of the biggest was the 2013 Association of American Law Schools Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and to the Law. In accepting that award on behalf of Derrick's memory, I noted that Derrick was not wrong about a lot of things, but he was wrong in thinking that perhaps the substance of his work would not survive him. In their dedication, AALS quoted a writer who noted that Derrick “sparked significant changes in the scholarly landscape of the legal field, as well as other disciplines.”

Derrick Bell-law teacher, mentor, scholar, activist, author, loving husband and father-larger than the sum of his many parts. In an epigraph about the protest by black athletes at the 1968 Olympics in Race, Racism, and American Law, he wrote about “the dramatic finale of an extraordinary achievement.” Derrick's extraordinary achievements, however, live on through his work and his beloved students. His legacy endures.

A Tribute to Derrick Bell

Henry McGee(fn*)

That Derrick Bell was an iconic figure in the long march of African-Americans to actual citizenship is without doubt...