Derrick A. Bell, Jr.

January 9th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt

Derrick A. Bell, Jr., started law school in the mid-1950’s, shortly after the Supreme Court’s momentous Brown decision. It must have been a time of hope for a talented black student, one who had already completed a successful tour in the United States Air Force. But it was also a time when rhetoric conflicted with reality. Bell was the only black student in his law school class, and one of only three black students in the school. He secured a spot in the Justice Department’s prestigious Honors Program after graduation, but the Department forced him to resign when he joined the NAACP.

Bell moved on to work with Thurgood Marshall, Robert L. Carter, and Constance Baker Motley on the difficult post-Brown tasks of dismantling segregation. He supervised more than 300 school desegregation cases, returned briefly to the federal government, and directed a center on law and poverty.

Harvard Law School invited Bell to join its faculty, and in 1971 he became the school’s first tenured black professor. He remained in the academy until his death, teaching at Harvard, Oregon (where he also served as Dean), Stanford, and NYU.

Bell was a controversial member of the academy. He wrote–and spoke–bluntly about racism. His views often offended white professors, but Bell persisted. Throughout his life, he flew at the front of the wedge in confronting racism and promoting integration. Bell’s tenaciousness, insights, and eloquence paid off. He changed, not only the face of the legal academy, but the way in which scholars, lawyers, and ordinary citizens think about racism and the law. On Sunday, the Association of American Law Schools honored Bell with its Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and to the Law.

When Bell began writing about racism in the 1970’s, his work was alien–and deeply unsettling–to white readers. Unease spawned rejection: Many early readers discredited Bell as someone who “complained too much” or “couldn’t get over racism, already.” Those are very mild versions of statements I heard throughout the late 70s and 80s, when Bell’s critical race theory was new.

Today, many more people–inside and outside the academy–perceive the deep roots and subtle shadows of racism. With that understanding, we have made more progress. But we got here only because people like Bell were willing to take us by the shoulders, shake us hard, and force us to re-think our assumptions.

Bell’s fight is far from over, but his victory lies in the truth of these words uttered by his widow, Janet Dewart Bell, when she accepted the award in his honor: “Derrick always worried that his work would die with him. But on this one thing, Derrick Bell was wrong.”*

* I paraphrase (and will update when the AALS tapes are available), but I’ve got the meaning. For more on Bell, please see this official site.