Historical/Biographical Note
Derrick Albert Bell, Jr. was born in 1930 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is a distinguished scholar and prolific writer on current issues, most notably civil rights in the United States. His writings and lectures have examined racism's workings in American society, and the legal remedies for racism as it is expressed in law and custom. He is or has been a member of the D.C., Pennsylvania, New York State, City of New York, and California bar associations.
After serving in the U.S. Air Force in Korea, he earned his BA in Political Science from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and his LLB from the University of Pittsburgh in 1957 - three years after the Supreme Court invalidated the principle of racially segregated schools in United States in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Bell became associated with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1960 (as first assistant counsel) and worked under the close tutelage and influence of Thurgood Marshall, later U.S. Justice Marshall, who hired him from his position as Executive Director of the Pittsburgh NAACP (DAB to Ellen S. Silberman, July 7, 1978, Box 10:7). After serving two years as a staff attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice, he resigned because the department asked him to withdraw his membership from the NAACP. Bell became assistant counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and between 1960 and 1966, he administered 300 desegregation cases regarding schools and restaurant chains in the South. Another influence on Bell in this period was U.S. Attorney Constance Baker Motley, later U.S. Judge Motley, with whom he worked in New York City and Mississippi through 1966.
Bell left the NAACP - LDEF in 1966 to become Deputy Director of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). He then left government service in 1968 for academia, first teaching at UCLA's Western Center on Law and Poverty. When Derrick Bell joined the faculty of Harvard University in 1969, he became the first African-American professor at that institution. In the fall of 1969, Harvard University Law School expected more than 100 black students to enroll. He would serve on the faculty as professor from 1971-1980 and 1986-1992.
In 1981 Bell left Harvard for the University of Oregon Law School where he was Dean until 1985, and was a visiting professor at other institutions in the period of 1985-1986 before returning to Harvard. He resigned his post at Oregon in protest over the University's refusal to offer a faculty position to a "woman of color." Once returned to Harvard in 1986, Professor Bell took unpaid leave from Harvard during the 1990-91 and 1991-92 academic years but retained his rank and appointment through the end of that period. He also took a visiting professorship at New York University Law School from 1990-1992 in protest of the lack of diversity of Harvard faculty. He is now a tenured member of the faculty at NYU.
Bell's written work, both in fiction and non-fiction has been widely praised for its imagination and spirituality and he has appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times and Christian Science Monitor, and legal journals such as: Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and Michigan. Seven of his books are considered "best-sellers," including: And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice, Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Race, Racism and American Law.
Early on, Bell became convinced of racism's permanence and the perceived existence of entitlement among whites, and that some legal remedies aimed at benefiting minorities inevitably benefited majority groups: see "Racism's Real Role," DAB at Indiana University Law School, February 7, 1992 (Box 28:10). These ideological convictions have at times divided him from some African American organizations who had different assumptions about the nature of racism and how to eradicate inequality among schools, in housing, access to higher education, and other areas. His opinions also have been many times contrary to those of his white and black colleagues in law, political activism, government, and academia.
Sources:
Derrick A. Bell, Jr., "The Burden of Brown on Blacks: History-Based Observations on a Landmark Decision," North Carolina Central Law Journal 7:1 (Fall, 1975), 25-38;
Derrick A. Bell, Jr., "Waiting on the Promise of Brown," "The Courts, Social Science, and School Desegregation: Part II," Law and Contemporary Problems, Duke Univ. School of Law, Spring, 1975.
DAB to Prof. Herbert Wechsler (Director, the American Law Institute), June 17, 1980 (Box 12:9) for an exposition of the legal principles involved in Brown v. Board of Education;
DAB to Arthur Chong, June 21, 1978 (Box 10:6) on Asian-American minority rights.
Crenshaw, Kimberlè, Race, Reform, and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimization in AntiDiscrimination Law, Harv. L. Rev. 1331, 1380-1381 (1988).
Friedman, Leon, The Civil Rights Reader (New York: Walker and Co., 1967
Goldman, Roger L., Thurgood Marshall: Justice for All (with David Gallen), (New York: 1992, Carroll & Graf.)
Greenberg, Jack, Crusaders in the Courts: How A Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
Hall, Kermit L. The Magic Mirror: Law in American History (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989).
Horwitz, Morton, The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992).
Morrison, Toni, "The pain of being black," Time, May 22, 1989, 120.
Return to topScope and Content Note
This scope and content note represents the two initial accessions: 95-019 and 96-003, processed by Marilyn Pettit. Subsequent accessions were either integrated into the original finding aid or added to the end of the box and folder list as additions to the original series as listed below. See notes at end of Scope and Content for more information on later accessions.
Series I: Correspondence, 1950 - 1991, 20 linear feet (20 records boxes), arranged chronologically;
Series I contains Prof. Bell's personal and official correspondence for the whole of his career through 1991, i.e., from the period of examination for the bar in 1959 through his leave of absence from the faculty of Harvard Law School in 1990-91. (Note that Box 1: 1-20 (1950 - 1969) are office files; Box 4: 7-17 (1959 - c. 1974) are personal materials.) The papers reflect a career that spanned the entire cycle of the modern Civil Rights movement, from employment by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York, 1960-1966, where he conducted research but also traveled in the South, investigating voting abuse, making speeches, and was once arrested in Jackson, Mississippi; to Harvard in 1969 as Harvard's first and only black professor of law: as Dean at Oregon Law, 1980-86; back to Harvard as professor from 1987-1990, and a dramatic and presaged resignation from Harvard in 1990-1991.
The correspondence indicates that Bell stayed in touch over the course of decades with friends and colleagues from the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and expended some effort to remain in discourse with friends and colleagues with whom he had experienced disagreement in policy or programming. Occasional personal expressions are present: a rare response to hate mail (letter of November 30, 1987, Box 19:12); and a formal note to Harvard's Law Dean Oliver Sacks in 1975 on the responsibilities imposed by his presence at Harvard, the resulting high volume of correspondence, and the consequent need for secretarial staff: Box 6:6. His correspondence constituted an unusually heavy burden that added to the normal duties of a teacher/scholar at a premier institution. For a comment on his inability to "add another civil rights-type conference" to his demanding schedule, see DAB to Walter J. Leonard, Asst. to President, Harvard University, September 28, 1976, Box 7:10.
* DAB to Constance Baker-Motley regarding a conference proposal, May 24, 1975 (Box 6:5); DAB to "Connie," September 23, 1975 (Box 6:8); DAB to C.B. Motley, August 26, 1971 (Box 4:13) recommending two student as law clerks; Nov. 29, 1976 (Box 7:12);
* Candid descriptions of his "Harvard experiences;" DAB to Prof. Henry J. Richardson, III, March 29, 1975 (Box 6:3);
* June 25, 1975 (Box 6:6), DAB acted as voluntary mental health legal advocate for a Harvard student. Referred to "psychic burden" on black students in higher education.;
* DAB to Napoleon B. Williams, Jr., NYU law professor re: minority problems with the New York State Bar Exam, October, 1975 (Box 6:10);
* DAB to Charlayne Hunter, May 24, 1975 (Box 6:5);
* DAB to Alice Walker, September 11, 1979, informing her of a canceled trip to San Francisco (Box 4:10); DAB to Alice Walker, October 16, 1979 supporting parole for black militant Imari Obadele (Box 11:10);
* DAB to Christy Hefner, Feb. 12, 1981, advising her to get a law degree to prepare her for the responsibilities of administering a large publishing firm (Box 13.6);
* March 15, 1983 memorandum to faculty and staff of University of Oregon Law School regarding the "budget battle" and declaring his intention to resign (Box 15:7);
* personal letter of apology for intemperate language from Paul Olum, President, University of Oregon, November 8, 1984 (Box 16:15);
Box 9 represents DAB's trip to mainland China in May, 1977 as a member of the Black American Judges and Lawyers China Study Tour occurred shortly after the normalization of relations in 1972-74. This collection yielded several photographs, some memorabilia, and undated background reading materials.
As Bell's correspondence grew more and more voluminous in the mid-seventies, the files grew increasingly complex and will present some challenges to the researcher. Before 1975, copies of student recommendations and critiques were filed in the monthly correspondence files. Isolating sensitive documents into separate files was not an option because of the great volume of materials and because this action would have been invasive of other evidentiary values; hence, sensitive and restricted documents have been left in their normal sequence with other correspondence. As of 1975, student recommendations were filed separately. Bell's students became practitioners, legal scholars, and law clerks at all levels of the American bench, in non-profit institutions, academia, litigation, public advocacy, and as elected legislators. The use of some folders containing sensitive documents relating to students and graduates are restricted.
Correspondence files after 1980 contain several sets of documents: "general" correspondence, "personal" correspondence, "recommendations," and secretarial chronological files of all outgoing correspondence. "General," "personal," and chronological copies were apparently filed separately, but were combined at some point, often but not always, into a single file folder. Each of several filing sequences occurring within a single folder has been brought into individual chronological order, the result being that several chronological sequences are present in many folders, not having been integrated into a single chronological sequence within a single folder.
The chronological secretaries' files begin with 1980 and were filed back-to-front in chronological order; they have been brought into archival chronological order (front-to-back), and are the surest record of the volume and sequence of outgoing letters from Bell's office. However, it is the correspondence files that contain incoming letters that generated Bell's responses, contain annotations and notes to secretaries, and occasional letters typed or keyboarded by Bell himself.
The first box of correspondence, 1956-1969, represents the course of the post-Brown Civil Rights movement and Bell's involvement with it. The files reflect Bell's work as Associate Editor of Pittsburgh Law Review, the beginnings of his career with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the UCLA Western Center on Law and Poverty, and early work with CLEO (Council of Legal Education Opportunity). These records illustrate the origins of relationships with other Civil Rights leaders and advocates in the 1960's, including joint projects undertaken, consensus on public issues such as Supreme Court nominees, and a shared commitment that appears both political and personal; see Mrs. Myrlie B. Evers to Bell, September 26, 1969 (Boxes 1:15 and 1:17); and Bell to Justice Thurgood Marshall, Justice Marshall to DAB, October, 1979 (Box 1:16).
These early files also demonstrate the beginnings of decades of Bell's advocacy for black student recruitment and support, recruitment of black women as law professors (Eleanor Holmes Norton, Assistant Director, ACLU, New York City, and Sheila Rush Jones, East Harlem Poverty Law Center), and courteous but determined questioning of authorities about small indignities and insufficiencies inflicted on black people, from deceptive advertising (DAB to the Heath Co., March 10, 1969, Box 1:13) to blatant mistreatment, the latter represented in correspondence of December, 1969, and January and February, 1970 (Box 1:18 and ff.), to President Morris Abram of Brandeis University after Bell observed a black cook-employee enduring verbal abuse and social isolation at a Brandeis dining hall. Correspondence for 1963 (Box 1:4) contains correspondence with Coahoma and Clarksdale Counties (Mississippi) School Boards and a 1963 poster publicizing a speaking engagement, with Bell's picture on the poster. (The original poster has been removed for preservation; a digitized copy will be posted on the Web site.)
His correspondence also illustrates relationships with black students who erred or failed to perform to academic standards (inadequate citations, late papers); and shows responses to a broader black American constituency who saw in him a champion of civil issues ranging from job discrimination to false imprisonment to the psychic burden of being black in a white society.
The volume of papers is too great to permit a comprehensive list of correspondents. A partial list follows:
Prof. Mary Frances Berry
Robert L. Carter, judge (U.S. Southern District)
LeRoy Clark, N.Y.U.
A. Leon Higginbotham
Justice Thurgood Marshall
Constance Baker Motley
Eleanor Holmes Norton
Prof. Frances Fox Piven
Diane Ravitch
Alice Walker
Robert H Alexander, Jr., special prosecutor, Oklahoma
F. Lee Bailey
Justice Harry A. Blackmun
Dorothy Chin Brandt, NY City civil court judge (December, 1987)
Prof. Peggy C. Davis, NYU Law School (July, 1987)
Michael Dukakis, Governor, Massachusetts
Ernest Gellhorn
William H. Hastie, U.S. Judge (3rd Circuit, Philadelphia)
Nathan Huggins, Harvard University
Reverend Jesse Jackson
Vernon Jordan
Attorney-General Robert F. Kennedy
Vilma Martinez (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund)
John Sexton, Dean, NYU Law School
Michael Sovern (professor of law, Columbia University)
Clarence Thomas, Director, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Governor Richard Thornburgh (Pennsylvania)
Andrew Young, US Congressman (Nov. 26, 1976.)
Later correspondents include: felons (June, November, 1987) and students whose physical and psychological limitations had been caused by, Bell considered, racial discrimination (July, 1987/Box 18:14). Other correspondents include: Harvard colleagues (Archibald Cox, Morton Horwitz, Alan Dershowitz), law deans, professors, association heads, and conference leaders (Millard Ruud, George Schatzki, Roy Mersky, Ernest Gellhorn).
Bell stayed in touch with students after graduation and wrote encouraging letters to the young and talented: see DAB to Lani Guinier, Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Washington D.C., April 15, 1980 (Box 12:5).
Series II: Speeches and writings, 1960-1992, 9 linear feet (9 records boxes), arranged chronologically.
Series II's original filing order was, it is surmised, "speeches," "writings," and "articles about Bell," but were disordered at the time of accession. They have been arranged in chronological order regardless of gênre, length, style, intended audience or medium, with some undated materials lodged in miscellaneous files. A few files that contained only a single item each have been gathered into files labeled with the appropriate alphabetical letter; "B," "D," "E," etc. The folders are labeled by month and year, though many of the speeches and writings are dated more precisely on the document itself.
It will be noted that some speeches were delivered on more than one occasion; the researcher should be aware of annotations in Bell's hand, variations in title and in substance. N.B.: literary copyright applies to unpublished materials, for which permission to quote must be sought by the researcher.
Series III: Subject files, 1970-1985, 19 linear feet (19 records boxes); arranged alphabetically.
The subject files are arranged in alphabetical order and reflect Bell's associational activities, memberships, interests, memorable events, and subjects for reflection; see Box 36:3 for church bulletin for the funeral of Medgar Evers in 1963; Box 36:16, "hate mail." Bell's own bar exam notes and review were moved from correspondence to subject files and are placed with other bar exam materials, Boxes 31 and 32. The bulk of the materials are from the 1970's. The subject files order should be closely examined for materials that are similar but not filed together; see, for example, Bell's testimony on busing and school desegregation to the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor in 1976 (Box 33:14), and correspondence with Congressman Edward I. Koch (D-NY, later Mayor) in the same period (Box 46:7-11).
Series IV: Course materials, 1969-1988, 10 linear feet (10 records boxes); arranged by subject.
Series IV (Boxes 50-59) represents a portion of Bell's background reading, syllabi and class assignments, unpublished papers, evaluations, grades, and reading materials that focused course development. This series is incomplete, with large gaps, which gaps may correspond to materials in Accession 95-015. The files are in rough chronological order within subject groupings that correspond to course titles.
Series V: Book materials, 1979-84, 6 linear feet (6 records boxes); arranged by subject.
Series V (6 records boxes) consists of reviews, writing projects, book manuscripts, chapter revisions, teaching manuals, and book proposals.
* Boxes 64, 66-69 contain materials accessioned in 1997 (number 97-014). Materials contained within this accession number span the years of 1982 to 1996, primarily 1994 to 1996. This accession grouping covers all series represented in the bulk collection, focusing on Series I and III, correspondence and subject files. As with the original accession this grouping also contains some restricted documents (student papers, resumes, sensitive correspondence) which have been separated from the original accession. This accession was processed by Teresa Mora.
** Boxes 64, 66, & 67 contain materials accessioned in 1997 (97.014) and 1998 (98.004). The boxes have been labeled indicating which folders belong to which accession number.
*** Boxes 64-67, 70-95 contain materials accessioned in 1998 (number 98-004). Materials contained within this accession span the years of 1955 to 1995, primarily 1990 to 1995. This accession includes all series represented in the bulk collection and has yet to be fully processed. Included at the end of the container list for the Derrick Bell Papers is a inventory of these boxes obtained through a survey conducted on February 12, 1998 by Teresa Mora and Amy Surak.
**** During the Summer of 1998, Jennifer Schwartz processed part of the 98.004 accession, limited mainly to Bell correspondence. Once these were put in acid-free folders and organized according to date, they were combined with the processed correspondence Teresa Mora completed of accession 97.014. (Hence the combined accessioned materials in boxes 64, 66, & 67.)
*****Boxes A-J - Journals, Bell's published articles, & materials on law cases were separated from the entire collection. They were processed and organized within 10 paige boxes (boxes are labeled A-J). Journals that do not contain Bell's writings are arranged alphabetically according to title. Articles written by Bell are organized by date.
Additional smaller accessions include: 99-008, 00-004, 01-013 and 02-014. Boxes 96-106 include materials from accessions, 99-004 through 01-013. These are not organized by series at this time.
Bell, Derrick A., Faces at the Bottom of the Well: the Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992).
Bell, Derrick A., Confronting Authority: Reflections of an Ardent Protester (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).
Bell, Derrick A., Gospel Choirs: Psalms of Survival for an Alien Land Called Home (New York: Basic Books, 1996).
The initial accessions (95-015 and 96-003) thus represent Prof. Bell's personal and scholarly life and career chiefly before coming to N.Y.U. in 1990 as visiting professor. Further accessions reflect his permanent presence on the N.Y.U. Law faculty since 1992. The collection presents formidable access problems; the archivist must govern access to the materials very carefully because of the prevalence of student papers, exams, evaluations, and recommendations, chiefly from Harvard University Law School and the University of Oregon Law School.
A number of unpublished manuscripts by Bell and others are present in the collection in which literary copyright resides. It is the researcher's responsibility to obtain permission to quote from such materials; see, e.g., "The Texas Black Colleges: A Historical Survey of State Law" by Lee Stanley Smith, 1979 (Box 14:10).
Not included in the collection is one records box, unnumbered, of personal materials scheduled to be returned to Professor Bell.
Accession 03-008 includes additions to materials in Series I, II, III, IV, and V with dates ranging from 1992-2002.
The original collection was reduced from 75 to 71 linear feet, chiefly by rehousing the files more efficiently. Only a few duplicates of materials (unannotated) were discarded. A number of photographs and slides were removed to the Photo Collection for preservation and are filed under "Bell, Derrick A."
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Separated Material
There is no information about materials that are associated by provenance to the described materials that have been physically separated or removed.
Return to topRestrictions
Access Restrictions
Restrictions may apply to all folders and documents that contain correspondence with, personal information about, evaluation of, grades, or recommending letters concerning prospective and matriculating students and graduates.
Use Restrictions
Permission to publish materials must be obtained in writing from the:
New York University Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
Phone: (212) 998-2646
Fax: (212) 995-4070
E-mail: university.archives@library.nyu.edu
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Administrative Information
Provenance
The collection was transferred to NYU Libraries by Prof. Derrick Bell.
Preferred Citation
Published citations should take the following form:
Identification of item, date (if known); The Derrick A. Bell, Jr. Papers; MC 138; box number; folder number;
New York University Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012, New York University Libraries.
Container List
[The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.]