The legal profession and the law have been enriched in many ways by the contributions of African-American lawyers and judges. I would like to highlight an African-American legal pioneer who had a direct impact on my career – Wade H. McCree, Jr.

Wade McCree was the first African-American to be appointed a circuit judge in Michigan. When President Kennedy appointed him to be a judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, he was only the second African-American ever to be appointed a United States District Judge; President Kennedy had appointed James Benton Parsons to the Northern District of Illinois a month earlier. Judge McCree later was appointed by President Johnson to be the first African-American to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and was appointed by President Carter to be Solicitor General of the United States.

The Solicitor General is an important official of any presidential administration and when a new President comes into office, the Solicitor General usually is replaced by the new President’s appointee. Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980 signaled the end of Wade McCree’s service as Solicitor General. Although the Solicitor General usually resigns or is replaced right at the outset of a new presidential administration, Chief Justice Warren Burger signaled to the Reagan transition team that he thought that McCree should stay on until the end of the current Supreme Court term and President Reagan did not replace McCree until the Summer of 1981.

Supposedly Wade McCree had given up his lifetime tenure on the Sixth Circuit to be Solicitor General upon President Carter’s promise to appoint him to the Supreme Court when a seat became available on the Court. But, alas, there were no openings on the Supreme Court while Jimmy Carter was President. So, Wade McCree, out of a job, then accepted a tenured professorship at the University of Michigan Law School. That is where I came to know Judge McCree, as most people called him at Michigan.

Wade McCree’s first year at Michigan was my second year in law school. Back then the law school did not have the same level of support for people applying for judicial clerkships as it, and many other law schools, has today. I was looking for advice on clerkships during the Spring semester of my second year and someone said that I should talk to Judge McCree. When I expressed some hesitation about approaching him without an introduction or appointment, I was told: “His door is always open, just walk in.” And, walk in I did.

Not only was Judge McCree incredibly welcoming, he went right to the point when I told him that I was from Baltimore. He said: “You want to clerk for Frank Murnaghan.”  Well, I did not want to clerk for Frank Murnaghan. Judge Harrison Winter, then the Chief Judge of the Fourth Circuit, was the judge with whom I preferred a clerkship. Judge Winter had a national reputation and I knew several lawyers who had clerked for him and respected him greatly. Judge Murnaghan had been on the bench less than two years, had a reputation at his former firm as a terror to work for, and had had a stroke the year before. Judge McCree was persistent – Frank Murnaghan was the judge for me.

I applied for clerkships with Judge Winter, Judge Murnaghan, and several other federal judges. In that era, federal appellate judges interviewed second year law students in April for clerkships to commence after graduation. I had several interviews, including interviews with Judge Winter and Judge Murnaghan on the same day. Judge Winter had said at the end of my interview that he would be deciding within the next few days, but if I got an offer before he got back to me, I should let him know. I got a call from Judge Murnaghan offering me a clerkship before Judge Winter got back to me. If it were not for Wade McCree, I probably would have tried to stall Judge Murnaghan and reach out to Judge Winter. In that instant I took Wade McCree at his word that Frank Murnaghan was the judge for me, and accepted the offer immediately. I can say without reservation, that Frank Murnaghan was the judge for me.

There will be other times and occasions for me to write about Judge Murnaghan with whom I had a close relationship for the remainder of his life. The point of this essay, is not only to thank Wade McCree posthumously for steering me in the right direction, but to tell a story about the kinds of things African-Americans had to endure not so long ago.

Wade McCree and Frank Murnaghan both were born in 1920 and had served as officers in World War II immediately upon graduation from college – McCree had graduated from Fisk University and served in the Army; Murnaghan had graduated from Johns Hopkins University had served in the Navy. They then were classmates at the Harvard Law School, Class of 1948. I knew that law school was the connection between the two men, but I did not know until after Wade McCree died why he thought so well about Frank Murnaghan. Between the time I graduated from law school in 1983 and Wade McCree’s death in 1987, I was in Ann Arbor several times and always would stop by Wade McCree’s office to say hello and thank him for his clerkship advice. He invariably asked me to give Frank Murnaghan his regards.

After Wade McCree died, I asked Frank Murnaghan about his relationship with Wade McCree. He responded:  “Wade liked me because when we were in law school I was one of the few white guys that would have lunch with him.”  This was not Alabama or Mississippi. This was not the nineteenth century. This was Harvard at the outset of the modern civil rights era. This was immediately after World War II, when most law students were recent veterans like Wade McCree. Yet, most of them would not have lunch with him.

Judge Murnaghan’s story brought home to me how pervasive racism was in the 1940s, even at an elite institute in the north among students who were nearly identical in their backgrounds other than skin color. Judge McCree overcame racism and became a distinguished jurist and ultimately represented the United States before the Supreme Court of the United States as Solicitor General. The legal profession and the people of the United States benefited greatly from his service. Judge McCree’s guidance definitely enriched my life and I am forever grateful to him.

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