ANNAPOLIS, MD — Governor Wes Moore today attended the historic posthumous bar admission ceremony for Edward Garrison Draper, who 166 years ago was the first Black person found qualified to practice law in Maryland, yet was denied admission to the Maryland Bar based solely on the fact that he was not white. The occasion marked the first time in the history of the Supreme Court of Maryland that a posthumous figure was admitted into the Maryland Bar.
“We are here to right an historic wrong. It is a wrong we did not commit, but it is one we will correct. While justice was delayed, justice can no longer be denied,”
said Gov. Moore. “The work we do today is about all of the Marylanders who had their dreams deferred. I am proud to stand with you and I am proud to support the induction of Edward Draper to the Maryland Bar.”
Edward Garrison Draper received a preparatory education at a public school for black youth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania due to the limited educational opportunities in Baltimore in the 1800s. Draper graduated from Dartmouth University and studied under former Maryland attorney Charles Gilman for more than two years.
Draper attempted to receive bar admission in 1857 but was denied by Baltimore Superior Court Judge Zachaeus Collins Lee, who found Draper to be “qualified in all respects to be admitted to the Bar in Maryland,” but unable to practice law because he was not a “free white citizen of this state.” At the time, only four Black Americans had successfully been admitted to the bar. Draper obtained a certificate from Judge Lee to practice law in Liberia after being denied bar admission in Maryland, and he practiced law in the country until his death in 1858 of tuberculosis at the age of 24.
On March 27, 2023, at the Supreme Court of Maryland’s invitation, retired Justice of Texas’s Fifth Court of Appeals John G. Browning, Maryland attorney Domonique A. Flowers, and University of Baltimore School of Law Professor José F. Anderson filed a petition for Edward Garrison Draper’s posthumous admission to the Maryland Bar. As Maryland was the last of the former slave states to admit Black lawyers to the bar and only did so after the state’s racially restrictive law was struck down in 1885, the event represents an opportunity to right the wrongs of discrimination that were once pervasive in Maryland.
Approximately 100 attendees representing the Judiciary and the Maryland legal community attended the ceremony this afternoon. Governor Moore was joined by Supreme Court of Maryland Chief Justice Matthew J. Fader, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, Comptroller Brooke Lierman, Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates Adrienne A. Jones, Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue, and former Chief Judge Robert M. Bell. During the event, two motions for admission were made, followed by a reading of the bar admission oath and a presentation of Edward Garrison Draper’s Maryland Bar certificate.