Washington Lawyer - March/April 2025 - 37

WORTH READING
Soul of the Court:
The Trailblazing Life
of Judge William
Benson Bryant Sr.
Tonya Bolden
University Press of Mississippi, 2025
Review by Diane Kiesel
D
uring the Great Depression,
it made more sense for a
Black man living in Washington,
D.C., to take a menial
government job than to attend
Howard University School of Law.
A government
job - no matter
how lowly -
meant a guaranteed
paycheck.
The life of a Black
lawyer meant
representing
clients of color,
most too poor
to pay. William
Benson Bryant Sr.
took the foolish
route, enrolling
in Howard's law
school in 1933. Tonya Bolden's Soul of the Court
is the story of Bryant's taking the road less traveled.
A quarter century later that road led him
to the United States Supreme Court, where he
argued - and won - a landmark case for a
man on death row.
In Mallory v. United States (1957), Bryant represented
Andrew Mallory, convicted of raping a
woman in the building where they lived. When
arrested, the evidence against Mallory was flimsy.
Police strengthened their case by postponing
Mallory's arraignment until he confessed. In
a unanimous decision, the High Court reversed
the conviction, holding that defendants must
be arraigned without unnecessary delay. It was
one of several cases from the Warren Court that
paved the way for the Miranda decision nine
years later.
Bryant's life story begins in the Jim Crow South.
He was born in 1911 in Wetumpka, Alabama,
where 10 years earlier a white mob had burned
to death a teenage Black boy a mile outside
town for allegedly attempting to " outrage " a
white woman. It was not a hospitable environment
for Bryant and his family, consisting of his
mother, Alberta (abandoned by Bryant's father),
and his maternal grandparents, Lizzie (a washerwoman)
and " Papa Charlie " Wood (operator
of a general store). Papa Charlie slipped out
of town in the dead of the night disguised in
women's clothing to avoid getting lynched for
standing up to white boys harassing one of his
daughters. Fleeing to Washington, D.C., he sent
for his family when Bryant was one year old.
To help readers appreciate Bryant's struggles,
Bolden recounts the injustices suffered by his
race. These ranged from humiliating insults to
disruption of their livelihoods when President
Wilson segregated the federal workforce, relegating
Blacks mainly to jobs that involved a
broom. And there was the ever-present threat
of violence. Nonetheless, the nation's capital
was home to an elite and vibrant Black community
during Bryant's youth. U Street businesses
thrived, the premier Dunbar High
School accepted the race's academically gifted,
and the upscale LeDroit Park neighborhood
was home to Howard's professors.
As a Howard undergraduate, Bryant worked at
a job that was once ubiquitous for men of color
- elevator operator - and then entered law
school. The dean was the stellar Charles Hamilton
Houston, the architect of the legal strategy
that prevailed in Brown v. Board of Education
and ended the " separate but equal " doctrine.
Bryant and Houston locked horns because Bryant
worked full time as a night switchboard operator
while in law school. Consequently, Bryant
was denied the scholarship reserved for the
top student in the first-year class. Still smarting
two years later, Bryant boycotted graduation.
" I sat on my front porch, " he said. In 1954, four
years after Houston's death, Bryant would join
Houston's prestigious firm.
Bryant began his legal career at the bottom -
in a one-man practice in a two-room office in
the shadow of the municipal courthouse, hustling
for appointments to represent indigent
clients charged with petty crimes.
Prosecutors were impressed with Bryant and
urged him to join the U.S. Attorney's Office,
though Bryant could name only one Black person
in the office, and that lawyer never went to
court. Bryant became an assistant U.S. attorney
in 1951; a year later he was prosecuting felonies
in D.C. Municipal Court. Future Virginia Senator
John Warner, who clerked for Judge E. Barrett
Prettyman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
D.C. Circuit, recalled meeting Bryant in 1953, saying
that Bryant was a " magnet " for him and his
fellow law clerks because of his courtroom skills.
Bryant did not always experience smooth sailing,
however. When Judge Thomas J. Bailey, an
old jurist from Tennessee, looked up from the
bench and saw Bryant's Black face, he snapped,
" What are you doing here? " With strength and
grace, Bryant replied, " Representing the government,
Your Honor. "
On July 12, 1965, President Johnson nominated
Bryant, then 53, to the U.S. District Court for the
District of Columbia, the second Black lawyer
appointed to that court (Spottswood W. Robinson
III was the first). In 1977 Bryant became the
court's first Black chief judge, serving in that
position until 1981 and then assuming senior
status. He served until his death at 94 in 2005.
Among Judge Bryant's prominent cases were
the Korean government bribery scandal involving
former California congressman Richard Hanna;
the trial of drug kingpin Linwood " Big Boy "
Gray, the reputed boss of a $30 million heroin
smuggling ring; and the two-month trial of
high-ranking FBI agents W. Mark Felt (later revealed
to be Woodward and Bernstein's " Deep
Throat " ) and Edward Miller for illegal break-ins
at the homes of friends of radical Weather Underground
members. Bryant oversaw conditions
in the D.C. Jail for more than 30 years pursuant
to a pair of class-action lawsuits filed on
behalf of prisoners.
Judge Bryant could be controversial. For example,
he called for the decriminalization of heroin
possession as early as 1977, to the dismay of
some of his colleagues. He was criticized for his
lenient sentencing. In 1987, when Congress adopted
mandatory Federal Sentencing Guidelines
that increased prison terms, Bryant rebelled
by refusing to handle criminal cases.
(The guidelines became advisory in 2005 after
being declared unconstitutional in United States
v. Booker.)
Overall, Soul of the Court is a loving tribute to
the man's long, prestigious career, topped off
by the construction of the William B. Bryant
Annex to the U.S. Courthouse on Third Street
and Constitution Avenue, N.W., in 2006.
Diane Kiesel is a retired judge of the New York
Supreme Court, adjunct professor of law, and
author.
MARCH/APRIL 2025 * WASHINGTON LAWYER 37
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