A Personal Tribute to Prof. Derrick Bell’s Legacy, 1930-2011

Prof. Derrick Bell’s life and legacy has been on my mind since his death last week. Prof. Bell’s legacy is important, for so many reasons. His scholarly work opened up new concepts in legal scholarship. In particular, his allegorical style, his use of storytelling, was integral to the formulation of critical race theory and the development of key concepts in the field of race and law. He put his career on the line to provide space and voice to legal scholars whose identities and ideologies were different from his own, in a true testament to the ideals of democracy and equality.

I can say without hesitation that without critical race theory, I do not know if I would have pursued law school. Before I learned about critical race theory, I thought that scholarship in the area of race and law began and ended with issues of desegregation and the civil rights movement. In college, after reading and learning about critical race theory, I wrote my senior essay on legal concepts in reading Toni Morison’s novels, a project that I remain proud of today.  The project allowed me to engage in legal analysis of the experiences that form the backdrop to the African American experience through the lenses of literature and storytelling. I never knew that lawyers wrote stories to explain the operation of racism in society. I never knew that there were law professors who researched the codification of racial identity. Critical race theory solidified my trust in my own voice in a way that my academic education had not. Where academia taught that objectivity was paramount, critical race theory helped me to articulate why these academic perspectives did not speak to my experiences.

Although today’s legal landscape is different, many of the problems remain the same. There are still challenges to ensuring that the voices of the most disadvantaged citizens are heard. There is still a need for legal scholarship that comes from all sectors and populations in the American experience, especially those at the margins of the American experience. And there is still a requirement for attorneys to dedicate their careers to the realization of democracy and equality. And although I was never a student of Prof. Bell, I was deeply touched by his life and his legacy.