Chuck Bryant

So we need to start screening basically for race.

Yeah, they said, we need to add a check here for race thing on the application to take the bar exam.

And that's essentially what they did.

So from 1912 all the way to 1943, if you checked African-American or God knows what they had down for you to check back then,

you were just not allowed to take the bar exam.

Sorry.

Like this is it was an actual, like you said, a gatekeeping mechanism to prevent black people from becoming lawyers in the United States.

And so in 1925, prospective black lawyers said nuts to that.

And they got together with actual black lawyers and they came up with the National Bar Association, which is still around today.

As an alternative for black attorneys to basically become attorneys rather than have to go through the ABA.

Yeah.

And, you know, since then, especially in like the 1970s, there there seemed to be like a series of lawsuits from black lawyers in different states that were suing over various what they felt were, you know, discriminatory policies within the test.

I don't think many of those were successful, though, were they?

No.

The one that sticks out the most that I've heard the most described is, well, just basically a good example of the lawsuits that came around at this time was Tyler v. Vickery, or Tyler v. Vickery if you're a lawyer.

It was a class action suit that alleged that Georgia's bar examinations cut score, which is the minimum score you have to have to pass,

had been adjusted with the introduction of the multi-state bar exam.

Remember the multiple choice test that they introduced?

That it had basically been introduced and designed to continue to keep black people from passing the bar exam.

And the Fifth Circuit Court of Georgia said...