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For 100 years, the Marion County Bar Association has been supporting Black lawyers and judges in the Indianapolis area.
For much of this year, the bar association is celebrating its centennial.
Established in 1925 as a meeting place for minorities in the legal field, the association has since flourished into a common ground for advocates of fairness, justice, and equality.
Now, the group’s leaders are celebrating its past and looking toward the future with a series of events that will include a May reception and a national Black bar celebration in July.
“Recognizing the contributions of lawyers of color over the past 100 years is not only interesting, but it’s an important part of American history,” said Tanya Walton Pratt, chief judge of the U.S. District Court of southern Indiana and bar association board member.
History
The Marion County Bar Association was established as a direct result of the exclusionary practices of white bar associations at the time.
According to historians, very few Black lawyers were practicing in the Marion County area before the year 1900.
The first Black attorney to be admitted to the bar in Indianapolis was James T.V. Hill, who practiced law from 1882 to 1928 and was one of the founding members of the Marion County Bar Association.
In 1998, the bar association dedicated a monument in the Crown Hill Cemetery to honor Hill and his wife, Sarah, who was a teacher with Indianapolis Public Schools, according to the Crown Hill Foundation.
“These pioneering black lawyers used their legal expertise to combat not just segregation and discrimination through advocacy and litigation while they were facing all these significant barriers of legal pressure within the legal profession,” Pratt said. “But it’s evolved, and it’s important to recognize the achievements of lawyers of color presently also.”
The Marion County Bar Association was established the same year as the National Bar Association. Because the American Bar Association would not accept African American lawyers into its membership until 1952, the National Bar Association was founded to support those who were denied entry.
According to the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, the Indianapolis Bar Association admitted its first Black member, Robert Bailey, in the 1920s, but he would be the only Black member for several years.
The Marion County Bar Association is one of 39 affiliate chapters of the National Bar Association, which also will celebrate its 100th anniversary at its annual convention in Chicago in July.
Several current members of the county bar association are also members of the Indianapolis Bar Association and the Indiana State Bar Association.
Despite the entities being separate, they often collaborate on events and sponsorships.
The Marion County association also has a seat on the IndyBar’s board of directors.
Seen as a place to foster community, several current leaders of the county bar association said their drive to join the association was born out of a desire to connect with likeminded individuals who could support each other in their careers.
Judie Hawley Conley, president of the bar association, joined the organization when she was admitted to the bar in 1979.
“At that time, there were not very many black attorneys, and there were less than five black female attorneys, so I wanted to have an opportunity to network and have a mentor and a role model that I could look to,” she said.
In the years following, Conley said the association has been crucial to her personal and professional life, allowing her to foster friendships and mentorships with peers and lawyers of the next generation.
100 years on
While the association started out as a way to support Black attorneys denied entry into other organizations, Marion County’s association opens its membership to anyone wanting to join.
“Our organization is dedicated to justice, fairness, and equality, and that doesn’t exclude others from being members, because our bar organization is inclusive. We do have a lot of diverse members, and we welcome their participation,” said Pamela Grant-Taylor, president-elect of the association.
Celebrations for the association’s 100-year anniversary kicked off in October with a gala marking the start of the anniversary year.
There, the association announced its plans to commemorate the milestone, which included a Black History Month celebration in February.
There will also be a reception at IndyBar’s block party in May and a national bar 100-year celebration in July at the national convention in Chicago.
Conley will travel to Iowa later this month to accept an award on behalf of the association for being one of six National Bar Association chapters that have been in existence for 100 years.
She said it’s an honor to celebrate how far the association has come since its founding.
“To see the growth and the development that has come from the very first year, where they fought to get a charter and organize an affiliate chapter to now, where we have a thriving chapter with judges and attorneys who are all active members is just amazing, and I’m just honored to be the president this year,” she said.
Members of the association said it’s important not only to look at how the organization succeeded in the past, but at how much more is to come as it embarks on its next 100 years.
“When I was president back in 2021, I just said the Marion County Bar is black history,” Grant-Taylor said. “So it’s just a continuation of that history, and I like to be a part of the legacy to keep all that going.”•
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