Judge Kentaji Brown Jackson made history as the first African American woman to be confirmed by the Senate to serve on the Supreme Court. While her confirmation is unprecedented for the Supreme Court, Jackson follows a list of other trailblazing Black women judges who turned heads and made history following their judicial appointment. A notable figure among them is Judge Vaino Hassan Spencer who served as the Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, in 1980.
Shattering the California Judicial Glass Ceiling
By Gillian Morán-Pérez
Hon. Vaino Spencer was born and raised in Los Angeles. She was the third African American woman in California to pass the Bar exam and was admitted into the State Bar the same year. In 1961, Justice Spencer made history when she was appointed Municipal Court Judge of the Los Angeles Judicial District by Democrat Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown — she became the first Black female judge in California and the third in the nation.
Justice Spencer devoted much of her efforts to the Civil Rights movement during the 60s, serving as a board member of the California Attorney General’s Committee on Constitutional Rights, a member for life of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and as a board director for the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing.
As a trailblazer for women, Justice Spencer sought out how to close the gender gap in national and state judiciaries. In 1979, Justice Spencer and California Judge Joan Dempsey Klein gathered with judges and bar leaders throughout the country and discussed the absence of women as attorneys and judges in the courtroom. To put this into perspective, 15 states did not have a female judge and only 28 female judges served in the court system nationwide. To rectify these absences, Justice Spencer and Klein co-founded the Black Women Lawyers Association and the National Association of Women Judges. Later on, she held the first conference for the Association the same year as the Association pledged to increase the number of women to serve on state and national judiciaries.
After 46 years of serving on the bench, Justice Spencer retired in September of 2007. Her legacy extends beyond the courtroom as she filled her life paving the way for future female judges and attorneys, and taking leadership roles in her community. She passed away at 96 years-old, in Los Angeles on October 25, 2016.
Farmworker Movement Collection Spotlight
By Marta Valier
As the digitizing process of Emmon Clarke and John Kouns’s photographs from the Farmworker Movement Collection keeps advancing, we will regularly highlight some of the 22,000 images that are part of this collection, and the stories they tell.
This month, in light of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) victory and the workers’ vote to unionize in Staten Island and Alabama, we share photos from the Emmon Clarke Collection at the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center about the elections that took place in November 1966 in Delano at the Irving Goldberg & Sons packing and shipping company. Workers were asked to vote whether they wanted a union or not, and said yes by a vote of 285 to 38. Carlota Fieros and Juanita Gonzales would become the workers’ representatives in the following negotiations for a contract. Just few months before, in August, historical elections were held at the DiGiorgio Corp.'s Sierra Vista ranch to choose who would represent farmworkers and negotiate their contract. The two contenders were the AFL-CIO United Fram Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) and the Teamsters union. The UFWOC had just been chartered a week before, with a merger between the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO. Although the Di Giorgio Corp. had sent letters to its employees urging them to vote for the Teamsters, the new AFL-CIO UFWOC won representation for field workers at the DiGiorgio’s Borrego Springs Ranch, Borrego Springs, and Sierra Vista Ranch, Delano. For the first time in U.S. history farmworkers were represented by unions.
Help us fund the graphic novel Warriors of San Basilio de Palenque
by Marta Valier
This month the center is launching a fundraising effort to produce its first online graphic novel based on the Richard Cross Collection. Amongst many other trips, photographer Richard Cross traveled to Colombia in the 1970s, where he visually documented daily life in what is considered the first Palenque (community of free Black slaves) in the Americas, near Cartagena, Colombia. He worked with anthropologist Nina S. de Friedemann and together they published the book Ma Ngombe: Guerreros y Ganaderos en Palenque (1979), which includes 260 photographs by Cross, offering a very comprehensive description of the most important aspects of the social and organizational life of the community of the Palenque. The online graphic novel Warriors of San Basilio de Palenque (working title) wants to pay tribute to, and possibly continue, the collaboration that Cross and Friedemann were able to establish with the Palenqueros. Grounding the online graphic novel on their documentation, the graphic novel tells the story of this community as it emerges from various sources. What takes form is a compelling story of resistance, resilience, and adaptability. Please visit the CSUN funder page to search for our project, learn more about it, and donate! We will update the link to our project fundraiser page on our social media channels. The funds will be used to pay the writer and illustrator (Marta Valier and Sara Scalia).
Abecedario de Juárez: An Illustrated Lexicon
By Marta Valier
In this episode of our podcast, Emancipated, we present a slightly edited version of a conversation with artist Alice Leora Briggs, as interviewed by professor José Luis Benavides and Marta Valier. In her newest book, Abecedario de Juárez: An Illustrated Lexicon, she and Mexican journalist Julián Cardona, bring to the forefront life in the Mexican border city of Juárez during the Six Years of Death, from 2006 to 2012, when Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched the so-called war on organized crime sending federal forces into the city and violence exploded. This book decodes and visually represents the new language that rose from a city at war, using Cardona's interviews, definitions, and Briggs's drawings, leaving a strong mark on a much-disregarded war. You can see a selection of Julián Cardona’s photo collection here.
Digital Stewardship and the Farmworker Movement
As part of the Fourth Annual Jess Nieto Memorial Conference, last March 31, on César Chávez Day, Dr. José Luis Benavides, director of the Bradley Center presented the talk titled, “Digital Stewardship and the Farmworker Movement: Preserving the Kouns and Clarke Archives at CSU Northridge,” moderated by Dr. Oliver Rosales, professor of History at Bakersfield College. Below is a video of the presentation: