The Sam Cary Bar Association is a legal association of Black lawyers in Colorado. Seven Black lawyers founded it in 1971, at which time it was the first Black bar association in the state. 

History

Sam Cary

The Bar Association is named after Samuel Eddy Cary, one of Colorado’s first Black lawyers. Born in 1886 in Kentucky, Cary was the first Black graduate of the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas. He was admitted to the Colorado bar 1919 and operated a solo practice in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood. However, on September 30, 1926 he was abruptly disbarred by the otherwise all-white Colorado Bar Association. This was at the same time as the infiltration of the state government by the Ku Klux Klan, which was highly active in Colorado in the 1920s, and questions persist about the role of racial prejudice in Cary’s disbarment. Cary was reinstated in 1935, and continued to practice law until his death in 1945.

Founding

The Sam Cary Bar Association was founded in 1971 by a group of seven Black lawyers led by Billy Lewis. Lewis was a graduate of Manual High School in Denver and was a graduate of Howard University, the historic Black law school of Washington, DC. He had a law firm with Black partners Morris Cole and Phil Jones and white partners Natalie and Hank Ellwood.

In the spring of 1971, Lewis organized six other Black lawyers to meet and create Colorado’s first Black bar association. The other lawyers he invited were King Trimble, Raymond Dean Jones, Daniel Muse, Norm Early, Phil Jones, and Gary Jackson.

The Sam Cary Bar Association was modeled after the National Bar Association (NBA), the country’s oldest and largest network of predominantly Black attorneys and judges, which had been founded in 1925 as the “Negro Bar Association.” 

Mission & Membership

The stated goal of the Sam Cary Bar Association was to focus on the needs of Black attorneys and the Black community in Colorado. At the time of its founding, all of its members were under thirty-five years of age and were known as activists and community organizers. In 1971, there were no Black partners in major Denver commercial law firms, no Black professors at any Colorado law school, and only two Black judges and one Black deputy district attorney in all of Colorado. As a result, the issues of communities of color were seriously underrepresented in the legal world, and the economic benefits of legal professions were predominantly directed towards white men.

The Sam Cary Bar Association was one of the earliest organizations advancing the need for more lawyers of color and women attorneys in Colorado. It advocated for inclusiveness and equity in the legal profession, and many of its members went on to be significant leaders within Colorado and national law. 

Notable members of the association include Wiley Y. Daniel, the first Black president of the Colorado Bar Association and Colorado’s first Black federal court judge; Gregory Kellam Scott, former Colorado Supreme Court justice; Norman Strickland Early Jr., former Denver District Attorney and fierce advocate for victim’s rights; Gary M. Jackson, former Denver County Court Judge.