TWO WOMEN
Two women continue to motive me in my efforts to expose and improve the judicial system–one Black and one white female.
When I first opened my office, I tried to hire a paralegal. One female called who still haunts me today. She was a white female who stated that she had graduated law school but was not a lawyer. I begged her to come and talk to me. She refused. She began to cry and hang up the phone. I asked her why she was not licensed and was not practicing before she hang up and she could not answer for the tears.
The second female was a student from the Islands who graduated from Texas Southern School of Law. I wanted to hire TSU students to help give them more clerking experience. I hired two TSU law students-one male and one female student. The female student called me when she could not pay the filing fee for the exam. I sent a check to the bar for her fee to take the exam which was $500.00 at the time. I did not hear from her for four or five years. What I saw chilled my bones. She had had a nervous breakdown. She was almost incoherent. She could not tell me what had happened. She had not passed the bar exam and could not cope with that result. I felt so blessed. There but for the grace of God went I. I could have been one of those women. I know that without Dean T.J. Gipson and staff attorney for the State Bar, I could have been either one of those women. I wanted to help but neither women would allow me to help. I can only speculate that something like what happened to me in Michigan occurred. I knew that Social Work had saved me. I had to care for my son and get him out of high school and college. I could not go into myself and think to much about what had happened to me in the licensure process.
These women motivate me because I see them as collateral damage to the corruption in the licensing process and its inherent unfairness. There were no definite standards. It was too subjective. There was too much politics in the process. It needs to be more objective. This is my goal. To make the process more open. I knew that I had not been treated fairly and the same thing could have happened to these women and many more. They motivate me to work to investigate the process and see what changes I can make or that can be made to make the process more fair.These women’s lives may have been destroyed or damaged by the licensing process. Did it happen because they were women or because of inherent problems in the system? I need to explore this. The memory of my experience with these women motive me. I can not let the thought of these women go. Change may be needed here.
