A Woman’s Place Is in the Professor’s Chair
Joyce A. Hughes
Joyce A. Hughes, professor of law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, was the first Black woman to achieve tenure at Northwestern University, and the first Black woman tenure-track professor at any non-historically Black law school in the nation.
A magna cum laude graduate of Carleton College, Hughes earned her JD from the University of Minnesota. In 1971, she became a member of the faculty there, making her the first Black female tenure-track law professor at a majority school. Reflecting on this appointment in her essay, “Neither a Whisper Nor a Shout,” she writes, “…in my early years of teaching, my students were primarily white males. So the challenges I faced were unlike my Black female predecessors who taught at Black law schools.”
Unfortunately, as young professor who was both Black and a woman, Hughes faced expectations and harsh criticism that her white male counterparts avoided. This resulted in a nine-and-a-half-hour hearing by the American Association of Law Schools, which decided she had been subjected to “the pressure that comes from unrealistic expectation,” including “be[ing] available for unscheduled consultation on the ‘black question’, or the ‘woman question’; […] to endur[ing] with grace and tolerance both inadvertent and overt racial slurs; to serv[ing] on all special committees relating to minority groups and women; and, of course, to teach[ing] her regular classes, serve on the regular faculty committee; publish[ing] scholarly articles and be[ing] ‘one of the boys.'”
The University of Minnesota delayed tenuring Hughes, who had grown frustrated with the challenging work environment she faced. While serving as a visiting professor at Northwestern Law, she felt a more collegial community. She joined the faculty at the Law School in 1975, although this came at a price: it took her another four years to attain tenure. By this time, she was no longer able to become the first Black female professor to achieve tenure at a non-historically Black institution, although she was the first at the Northwestern Law to do so.
Throughout her career in teaching and scholarship, she has established herself as an expert in the areas of evidence, civil procedure, constitutional law, and refugees and asylum. Among her many accolades both within and outside the Law School, she was named the Harry B. Reese Teaching Professor for the 2016-2017 academic year.
In anticipation of this exhibit, Hughes graciously described her historic experience:
When I became the first Black woman to receive tenure in any department at Northwestern University, I did not know of Black women Lutie Lytle and Sybil Jones Dedmond who blazed trails before me. Lytle was the first woman to teach in a law school in the United States when in 1897 she started teaching at Central Tennessee Law School in Nashville, Tennessee, a black school. Sybil Jones Dedmond, a Black woman who taught at North Carolina Central University Law school – a black school – from 1951 to 1964 was tenured before I was.
I viewed my receipt of tenure at Northwestern in 1979 as vindication of having endured and overcome the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” at the University of Minnesota Law School where in 1971 I became the first Black woman in the country to be a tenure track law professor at a majority school.
It is my hope that Black women professors always will be able to insist on the dichotomy between who we are – Black women – and what we do, in my case teach law.
Recommended Resources
Hughes, Joyce A. “Black and Female in Law.” Rutgers Race & The Law Review 5 (2003): 105-115 .
—–. “Different Strokes: The Challenges Facing Black Women Law Professors in Selecting Teaching Methods.” National Black Law Journal 16.1 (1998): 27–34.
—–. “In the Beginning.” Perspectives (American Bar Association. Commission on Women in the Profession) 10 (2001): 3.
—–. “Neither a Whisper Nor a Shout.” In Rebels In Law: Voices in History of Black Women Lawyers. Edited by J. Clay Smith, Jr. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000: 90-101.
“Report of the Section on Administration of Law Schools.” Association of American Law Schools. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting 1973, no. Part One – Section II (1973): 108-226.
Additionally, to learn more about Joyce A. Hughes, her history, and her work, see Shanice Harris’s feature on her, “A Pioneer in Law,” in the Spring 2020 issue of the Northwestern Law Reporter.
