Judge James T. Giles, who recently joined Blank Rome as of counsel, needs little introduction. After graduating from Amherst College in 1964 and Yale Law School in 1967, he began an illustrious career, first as a field attorney with the National Labor Relations Board, then as an associate with Pepper Hamilton LLP in 1968—the firm’s first black lawyer—and, in 1974, the first attorney of color to be elected to the firm’s partnership. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter nominated him to serve as a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and he rendered distinguished service on that court for nearly 29 years—including as chief judge from 1999 through 2005—before stepping away in 2008 to return to the practice of law.

Q: Judge, your impressive résumé is a matter of public record. But can you tell me a little about your pre-law background—some things that might not jump out to the reader of your résumé?

Judge Giles:

I grew up in the vicinity of Lynchburg, Virginia, south of Charlottesville by some 50 miles and not far from the historic Appomattox Courthouse, where General Lee surrendered to General Grant. I spent quite a bit of my early youth in rural Nelson County, Virginia, where I was greatly influenced by my maternal grandparents with whom I spent hot and humid, playful summers. My mother was a domestic worker, and my father was a laborer in the Lynchburg iron foundry. Dad was a World War II veteran who, as a very young man, had been called upon to fight fiercely in Germany in the Battle of the Bulge. He never spoke to me directly about that war experience, but I believe that, like most other colored troops in that era, he was greatly affected by the U.S. Army’s denigrating racial segregation policies and practices, which persisted even as he was prepared to die for his country. In civilian life, I don’t think that he had any motivating optimism that the de jure segregationist laws and attitudes prevailing in the Commonwealth of Virginia would ever change. On the other hand, my mother was optimistic that through solid foundational education one could pull one’s self up by his own and others’ bootstraps.

My early education was in a one-room school, taught by my grandmother who also taught many other people from the area. Public education and the world as I knew it were racially segregated. I was ever aware that very cruel things could be done to people of color with impunity. That was both frightening and stultifying. How to cope with the irrationality of racial segregation while maintaining self-respect was learned intuitively as a matter of survival. “Be respectful but don’t bow and scrape,” echoes in my memory.

Fourth grade resulted in a dramatic elevation in my educational structure—I went from a one-room country school to a two-room country school in Nelson County. When my parents moved from Nelson County to Lynchburg, I was enrolled in the elementary school there in fifth grade.

Lynchburg’s public schools continued to be segregated well into the 70s. “All deliberate speed” was not a concept understood by the powers that be as reasonable speed. It was an excuse to drag feet rather than to implement Brown v. Board of Education. Virginia was the South’s leader in resisting Brown. One county not far from Lynchburg closed all its public schools and only gave grants to white students to go to “private schools.” That was an arrogant form of state action that deprived a whole generation of black kids of public education. In the 50s and 60s, “separate but equal” was viewed by many as the “God-given” way of American life that was to be preserved no matter what the “communist Earl Warren Supreme Court” said.

Despite my high school’s small size—in my class there were about 100 students—our school was very competitive in sports and everything that was in competition in the educational system in Virginia. We had, as many other black schools had, excellent teachers—persons who, because of race segregation, had acquired graduate degrees in the subjects taught, but were not able to apply their education in jobs other than teaching in segregated schools. So, in terms of educational quality, we had inspired, informed teachers who equipped us well for what we would likely have to encounter after graduation. As one would expect, most graduates were compelled to leave Lynchburg to find job opportunities or higher education. A high percentage of male graduates volunteered for military service.

Academically, I did well in high school. I was valedictorian and class president, a member of the football team, active in dramatic arts and chorus, and even was captain of the student safety patrol. Pauline Weeden, vice principal, and subsequently assistant treasurer of the Commonwealth in the Governor Wilder administration, was the sorority sister of Patricia Roberts Harris, Esquire, later Dean of Howard University Law School and U.S. Secretary, both of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, but who in 1959 was associated with the National Scholarship and Service Fund for Negro Students. Mrs. Weeden introduced me to Mrs. Harris, who had a relationship with Harvard University. At the end of my junior year, Mrs. Harris encouraged me to apply to attend Andover Academy in Massachusetts for a summer program sponsored by Harvard. The Andover experience was a great “wake up” call. I discovered that I knew a lot less about science and math than the full-time Andover students. Despite receiving the award for the greatest academic improvement at the end of the summer program—an award of dubious academic distinction—I left Andover with a severely bruised ego. It had been a maturing experience, but I was not eager to repeat it. I was content with the scholarship opportunity I had at Virginia Union University in Petersburg, Virginia. When Harvard College sent me an application for admission to its freshman class, I didn’t fill it out. My silent excuse was that it was too long.

Mrs. Harris contacted Vice Principal Weeden about my lack of diligence. I voiced my lame brain excuse that the Harvard application was too long. Thankfully, Weeden and Harris did not give up on me. I imagine that Harris said to herself, “Well, an Amherst College application is shorter and he will have no room for excuses.” She took no chances. She visited my parents. My father just looked at me. Needless to say, I applied to Amherst College. I was accepted.

Upon admission, I thought I wanted to go into medicine, but freshman physics dissuaded me and many in my class from that daydream.

Q: Don’t tell me the only reason why you’re a lawyer is because you couldn’t pass physics.

Judge Giles:

I passed. But I realized that if I kept going, I wasn’t going to pass anything else that had to do with pre-med. A bedside manner was just one of the components that one would need to have to be a good doctor, I concluded. I wasn’t impressed with history because, given the history that I had experienced up to that time, I wasn’t very eager to celebrate racial segregation or other kinds of segregation on which American history seemed to be taught.

Q: So when and why did you decide to become a lawyer?

Judge Giles:

Well, I became an English major. I guess that was a form of escapism. I found a way of looking at some of the 19th century writers—Melville, Hawthorne, and Clemens. Their writings to me reflected a kind of guilt trip on the state of race relations in America during their time. So I enjoyed writing about that. I was determined to become a teacher because my grandparents and the people that I had known who had been great forces in my life were all teachers. I was accepted for the Harvard Masters in Teaching program, and I was all prepared to go to Harvard when Dean Porter at the college called me to his office and inquired on my post-graduation plans. He suggested that given the times, I might think seriously about applying to law school. I recall he said something like, “There are teachers, but now your people really need lawyers.” Which was true.

I applied to several law schools. Yale admitted me.

In terms of job opportunities, there weren’t law firm opportunities like we think of them today.

Q: What were the law firm opportunities at that time?

Judge Giles:

This was 1964. Established law firms had not yet come to the conclusion that there was going to be a cultural change in the world such that minority lawyers would be beneficial contributors to the economic success of any firm. Law firms were tolerating their clients’ biases. You have to appreciate that this was a time when Brown v. Board of Education was under attack, and there were real efforts to impeach Chief Justice Earl Warren. President Kennedy had been assassinated. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 legislation was imperiled. There was no Public Accommodations Act. There was no Voting Rights Act. There were powerful, political forces trying to maintain the status quo of racial division—separateness in America.

Thankfully, there were powerful forces—lawyers who were committed by oath of their profession to the essential principle of Equal Justice Under Law, the fundamental democratic principle engraved above the entrance to the U.S. Supreme Court. They have fought, and are continuing to fight, the good fight every day for me and for you and for us all, for our equal opportunity under law. I am grateful every day for their tireless efforts and personal sacrifices in trying to save America from abandoning that basic principle as was unfortunately done in Plessy v. Ferguson and Korematsu v. United States, two of the worst race decisions in Supreme Court history.

Here we are in 2018. Consistent with the Preamble to our Constitution, America must be committed to inclusiveness. That is our national strength, which unfortunately we can so easily deny to ourselves and our posterity by trafficking in or tolerating democracy-destructive divisiveness.