Pioneer Spirit

As we close our celebration of Black History Month, we should pause to remember three pioneers of California's legal tradition: the state's first African-American woman lawyer and judge, and California's first African-American woman federal judge. Each of these women exemplifies a high degree of courage and accomplishment from which we can learn.

Annie Virginia Stephens Coker was born in Oakland in 1903, the daughter of a chef. She attended Oakland public schools until her family relocated to Pacific Grove, where she completed high school.

Returning to the San Francisco Bay Area after high school, Coker entered the University of California, Berkeley, becoming one of the few African-Americans of that era to receive a college education. She earned a bachelor's degree there in 1924.

At her father's urging, she entered Boalt Hall, where she earned a law degree in 1929. She was one of two women in her 47-member graduating class.

A few months later, on Oct. 15, 1929 - days before the stock-market crash that would lead to the Great Depression - Virginia Coker, as she was known by then, made history by becoming the first African-American woman admitted to the California Bar.

After a decade in Virginia, she returned to her native state, joining the Office of Legislative Counsel in Sacramento. There, she was responsible for compiling, maintaining and eventually indexing the state codes, which numbered only 12.

Coker's friends and colleagues described her as "bright," "reserved," "every inch a lady," "loved by all" and someone who "had class." Travel and music were her favorite pastimes.

Like many of us today, she hated to cook and loved to shop. She once told a friend, "If God ever told me, 'Virginia, you have one more day to live,' I'd like to spend it shopping!"

Coker was a remarkable, hardworking, conscientious employee who was revered by her co-workers. One of her colleagues described her as "a good supervisor, a good friend, someone you could take personal problems to."

She had excellent writing skills and was gifted with what one co-worker described as "the uncanny faculty for stating things in one sentence, stripping away unnecessary verbiage and getting straight to the point." When she retired from the Office of Legislative Counsel in June 1966, her 27 years of service distinguished her as the employee with the longest tenure in that office.

Coker, who spent her remaining years in Sacramento, died in 1986, two months shy of her 83rd birthday.

In 1961, 32 years after Coker became California's first black woman attorney, Gov. Pat Brown appointed Vaino Hassan Spencer as our state's first African-American woman judge. She was named to the Los Angeles Municipal Court.

Born in Los Angeles before the Depression, Spencer's first professional career was in real estate. As she watched a male broker prepare for the bar examination during the late 1940s, she felt that if a man could go from real estate into law, then perhaps she could, too.

During her early 30s, Spencer made that career change. She enrolled in and graduated summa cum laude in 1949 from Los Angeles City College, then attended Southwestern University School of Law. She earned her law degree in 1952, passed the bar that year and realized her dream of becoming a lawyer.

Spencer went into practice with the former real-estate broker who had inspired her to attend law school. Later, savvy businesswoman that she was, she even purchased an interest in the building that housed their practice.

Spencer recognized that African-Americans needed political clout if opportunities for advancement were to be made available to them. In 1957, she co-founded the Democratic Minority Conference, formed to increase the number of black, Latino and Asian-American elected officials in Los Angeles. She co-founded the Black Women Lawyers Association of Southern California in 1973 and co-founded the National Association of Women Judges six years later, serving as its president in 1981.

Spencer also founded Wives of the Bench and Bar, a Los Angeles-based group that has given nearly a million dollars in scholarships to minority law students.

Not surprisingly, Judge Spencer became Justice Spencer. In 1980, Gov. Jerry Brown appointed her to the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles, where she sits today as presiding justice of Division 1.

Federal courts historically have been a safe haven for African-Americans, protecting their right to vote and enforcing civil-rights laws. Particularly in the South, during the turbulent years of the civil-rights movement, African-Americans turned to federal courts when justice eluded them in state courts.

In 1980, the same year Spencer was elevated to the appellate court, President Carter appointed California's first African-American woman federal court judge, Consuelo Bland Arnold Marshall.

Born in 1936 in Knoxville, Tenn., Marshall settled on a law career early. She explained that an assignment for her ninth-grade civics class was to make a career book. She had an ardent interest in the civil-rights movement and knew that the law was the best vehicle for social change, so she chose that field as her career. She did not veer from that path.

She earned a bachelor's degree then a law degree at Howard University. After working in the Los Angeles city attorney's office, where she met and worked with Johnnie Cochran, she, Cochran and another attorney formed a law firm.

Marshall then ascended the rungs of the judicial ladder, serving as a court commissioner, a municipal-court judge and a Superior Court judge before being appointed to the federal bench. For many years, she was the only black woman federal-court judge in California.

But Marshall's trailblazing did not end there: She went on to become the first African-American woman to serve as chief judge of a federal district, stepping down from that post in 2005.

People ask whether women make a difference on the bench. We must apply the same law our male colleagues apply, so there is no difference there, and I think we all agree that there is no monolithic woman's perspective, just as there is no monolithic African-American perspective.

Perhaps only history will tell whether women judges make a difference in the quality of American justice. For my part, I am convinced that, as in any field, the experiences of the decision-maker can make a tremendous difference in the approach that person takes to resolving conflict.

Our experiences as women, and as African-American women, give us a unique perspective on the world. Ours is a perspective to be valued, encouraged and honored.

We must ensure that all segments of society pay appropriate tribute to the African-American women trailblazers who have forged an honorable path for us to follow. It is on their shoulders that we stand, and it is their legacy we uphold.

May their courage, conviction, community involvement and passionate commitment to excellence continue to inspire us all.