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After years of struggle a black female lawyer leads her firm into the corporate mainstream.... CORA WALKER

NEW YORK-On the wall of Cora T. Walker's office are signed photographs from former Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, and old friend and political ally, and from ex-client Father Divine, the charismatic Harlem preacher of the Depression era who convinced his followers he was God. 

CORA T. WALKER was born in Charlotte, N.C., in 1924, one of nine children. Her mother had come from a comfortable, middle class black family. "she had gone to college," Ms. Walker explains, 'but, as my mother would say, she had "the misfortune of marrying wrong.' My father was not an educated black." 

The Depression dropped the family from the small black middle class into poverty. "My grandfather, my mother's father, was a doctor. He thought he had fixed things so we would be provided for. It turned out that the crash came-the will was broken, the trusts invaded. And we wound up on welfare." 

The Family moved to New York. 

"I resented the poverty." Ms. Walker says. "My idea was to get out and make a whole lot of money.

"So when I graduated from high school I went to the welfare investigator and told her, 'thank you very much, but my family doesn't need [welfare] anymore." Ms. Walker recalls. "I was arrogant and she closed our case. She wouldn't reopen it unless I apologized. I never apologized." 

Her mother was not pleased. "My mother told me, 'Since you're so smart, then you'd better support us.'"

Ms. Walker earned money by typing, selling greeting cards and then working at Western Union from 4 p.m. to midnight while attending St. John's University full time during the day on an academic scholarship. She signed up for a five-year joint bachelor's and law program, which she completed on schedule in 1947. 

Law degree in hand, Ms. Walker prepared to take the world by storm, blissfully unaware that a black female lawyer might encounter obstacles. "I was totally naive about the real world," she says. "I've always believed that if the cause is just, there is a way, somewhere, somehow." 

Ms. Walker was in fact so innocent that when she graduated from law school she responded to an advertisement for lawyers by the Wall Street firm of White & Case-in that era, a lily-white, Protestant bastion of male privilege. "They weren't even taking people with Jewish or Italian-sounding names, let alone blacks or women." Ms. Walker recalls. 

Undeterred, Ms. Walker approached the few black law firms in Harlem, and was equally surprised to find that they didn't want her either. "I was not aware it would be a problem because I was a woman. The one thing nobody wanted was a woman lawyer." 

MS. WALKER THEN fell back on what she calls "Plan B"-opening her own practice. She sublet an office in Harlem in a suite where another lawyer practiced. He was so irritated at being put with a woman that he moved out. 

Even though she had no money, no clients and no idea of how to go about getting either, Ms. Walker pressed ahead. That was the age when Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" was an American best seller, and Ms. Walker bought a book on setting up your own law practice that had much in common with Mr. Carnegie's classic. 

She relates, with amusement, her youthful attempt to follow the ABCs of the book: "One of the things my little book told me was 'Get to know undertakers; they meet a lot of people.' One of my first jobs was doing collection work for an undertaker." 

Ms. Walker's first big case came from a family misfortune. Her father, then divorced from her mother, had been hit by a car and seriously injured. 

"Much to the chagrin of my mother, I represented my father and I got this fantastic settlement," Ms. Walker recalls. "By today's standards it would be worth about half a million dollars," 

But this victory nearly ended her career before it began.

At that time it was unwritten rule, she says, that black lawyers did not handle the larger claims filed in New York Supreme Court, the state trial court. They were relegated to civil and small-claims courts, and also practiced in criminal and housing courts. 

Ms. Walker was made aware of having broken the taboo when she arrived in the chambers of Supreme Court Justice William T. Powers to discuss a possible case settlement. "the judge told me: 'You have no business in this court with a case this size.' I told him: 'In all due respect your honor, that's none of your business.'"

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A Practice Flourishes In Harlem
During the past 20 years, the partnership of Cora T. Walker and her son, Lawrence R. Bailey Jr., has been moving toward the mainstream of corporate practice, snaring a handsome portion of the personal injury defense work for three major East Coast railroads. 

Ms. Walker says the judge apparently then decided to teach her a lesson. 

WHEN THE discussion failed to lead to a settlement and the proceedings were about to begin, Ms. Walker went to the phone to summon an expert witness to court. Then, according to court records, the judge sent a clerk to fetch Ms. Walker. She told him that she would come as soon as she got off the phone. 

When she returned to the courtroom, Judge Powers cited Ms. Walker for criminal contempt. 

Friends advised Ms. Walker it was useless to appeal. The judge, apparently, was willing to agree to a compromise: if she would accept the conviction, he would agree not to send her case to the local disciplinary committee and she would not face disbarment. 

But believing the conviction totally unwarranted, Ms. Walker declined the offer and instead went to one of the two black judges in the state, Municipal Judge Charles E. Toney. He advised her to appeal and helped her get a lawyer from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 

To the surprise of most, Ms. Walker won on appeal. The Appellate Division wrote: "In our opinion these facts do not establish disorderly, contemptuous or insolent behavior tending to interrupt the proceedings of the court or to impair its authority within the meaning of Judiciary Law; nor constitute criminal contempt of court as therein defined," Walker v. Powers, 275 A.D. 688 (1949).

"One hour after the decision, he [Justice Powers] dropped dead of a heart attack," she notes. 

This victory and the hefty settlement she won suddenly caused Ms. Walker's stock to rise dramatically in the Harlem legal community. "The bench and bar knew it was for real," she says. "As a result of the publicity, everybody wanted that fighting young woman lawyer." 

"Suddenly I became a negligence whiz," she adds. At that time, according to Ms. Walker, there were virtually no black personal injury attorneys. 

"It used to be if you got hurt, people said: 'Get yourself a good Jewish lawyer," Ms. Walker says. "Then it became 'Get yourself Cora Walker or a good Jewish lawyer.'" 

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