Blog 111: Time, Hope, Change, Forward, President Obama and Some Charlotte Black Lawyers

By Deborah A. Nance

Guest Writer- Attorney

(This article is dedicated to my late beloved mother,
Christine Long Nance)

Forward Moving of Time

     Since the beginning, time has been a silent recorder of history. An irreversible forward mover, time has recorded every hope, change and event, known and unknown to humanity. 

     In early September 2012, time is expected to move forward and record what some Americans have hoped for, but what was inconceivable to many less than a decade ago, given this nation’s history of racial civil rights divisions. The historic setting is the Southeast, more specifically Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.   

     The historic event is the nomination of an African American for a second term as President of the United States of America by a major national political party.  The history-makers are a black lawyer named Barack Hussein Obama, II and the Democratic Party.   

     Ironically over 150 years ago, time recorded the nation’s other major party, the Republican Party, the supporter of the abolition of African American slavery, as the historic racial change-maker.  

Passing and Denial of Political Access

     No publicly known female has ever been nominated for President by a major political party. American females did not gain the right to vote throughout the United States, until 1920 when the 19^th constitutional amendment was enacted.   
     Americans possessing a drop of African blood were deemed to be colored, Negroes, blacks or African Americans by this nation’s laws or social conventions.  For many years, given this country’s racial history, it would have been political suicide for any Presidential contender to publicly confirm a trace of African ancestry.

     According to rumors, males possessing a genetic make-up of African and non-African blood secured the White House seat before President Obama.  The rumors are probably true given this country’s history of the races’ co-mingling in spite of past anti-race mixing laws and social taboos.  Of the number, President Obama is the first who has publicly admitted his African ancestry. If others served, then they passed as “whites”.

     For most of this nation’s history, prior to the late 1900s, very few persons known to be black managed to secure local, state or federal political offices. This was true whether blacks were categorized as slaves, free blacks or Jim Crow blacks.  The only exception to this occurred during the Reconstruction Era, which followed this nation’s Civil War.

     The enslavement of blacks was one of the issues that divided the nation and caused the southern slave state to secede from the United States. The Confederate  Army defended the southern slave states.  The Union Army defended the nation and defeated the Confederate Army.  As a result, the northern states and southern states were reunited.  Another lawyer who became President, Republican Abraham Lincoln, occupied the White House seat during the Civil War.  President Obama is an admirer of Lincoln.

Changing of the Racial Climate

     During the Jim Crow Era, extreme racial segregationist laws and practices were renewed against African Americans in the South.  As a result, most of the political, social, economical and educational opportunities gained by blacks during the Reconstruction Era were virtually eliminated. 

     While winning the White House seat and other elected offices appear to be a hoped-for but impossible dream for blacks, a change in this nation’s racial, political, economical, educational and social structure did come.  The change came slowly and gradually despite past laws, social customs, murders, job losses, home-bombings, police dogs, fire hoses, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, poll taxes, lynch mobs and white supremacists.  And through it all, time continued to move forward to record the change and all of the events which led up to the change.

     Obama came to Charlotte to campaign during his first bid for President. At that time his campaign slogan was “hope and change”.  Now it is “forward”. 

     Time recorded that visit and time has recorded the arrival of other black lawyers to Charlotte too.  Unlike President Obama, some black lawyers have come to Charlotte to practice law.  Some have played a role, along with non-lawyers, in the long struggle for racial civil rights in the United States. Victories in the struggle for civil rights for blacks have resulted in civil rights gains for all Americans, including women and other minority racial groups.

Black Lawyers

     Some black lawyers who started law practices in Charlotte before 1960 include John Sinclair Leary, Sr., John Thomas Sanders, Jesse Simpson Bowser, Leon Peter Harris, Ruffin Paige Boulding, Thomas Henry Wyche, Robert Davis Glass, Charles Vincent Bell and Walter Brewer Nivens.  

     President Obama had not been born when they opened their local law offices.  By the time Obama received his law degree in 1991, only Glass, Wyche and Bell were still alive.

     All nine practiced law during the Jim Crow Era and some lived to see the end of the Jim Crow Era.  Many paved the way via litigation and other lawful means to secure the elections or appointments of blacks to local, state and national political offices and/or to abolish Jim Crow laws and customs. 
     Although all hoped for a political, educational, economical and social climate which was just and equitable to Americans regardless of their racial ancestries, none lived to witness the nomination of the first openly black male for the Presidency of the United States by a major political party.   However, time, that irreversible forward mover and silent recorder of history, witnessed it all.