Maryland to Posthumously Grant Black Attorney’s 1857 Bar Application
A Maryland State flag in front of the Maryland State House in Annapolis.
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Maryland’s Supreme Court is set to take a step toward rectifying the state’s racist past, recognizing that Edward Garrison Draper should have been the state’s first Black lawyer when he applied in 1857.
Draper will be posthumously admitted to the state bar in a special session in Annapolis on Oct. 26 — 166 years after a judge in Baltimore said he was qualified in all respects to practice in Maryland except for a statute limiting the profession to White citizens. Draper instead moved to a colony in Liberia, with plans to pursue a career denied to him in the state of his birth.