Digital Commons Network^™

How The Cleveland Bar Became Segregated: 1870-1930, Robert N. Strassfeld

Robert N. Strassfeld

Abstract

Paper Title: How the Cleveland Bar Became Segregated: 1900-1930

This article examines the changing perimeters of professional opportunity and the professional choices made by Cleveland’s African American lawyers in the early twentieth century. At the turn of the century, the Cleveland bar could fairly be described as racially integrated. The openness of the bar and the response of African American lawyers shaped the day-to-day professional lives of those lawyers. This openness manifested itself in a number of interracial law practices, in a client base for black lawyers that was predominantly white, in the court appointment practices of white judges, …