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Duane Morris Honored to Receive Supreme Court Admission Certificate for Pioneer for Diversity in the Law

May 2, 2012

Duane Morris Honored to Receive Supreme Court Admission Certificate for Pioneer for Diversity in the Law

May 2, 2012

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Honorable Ronald D. Castille, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, Makes Presentation to Duane Morris

PHILADELPHIA, May 2, 2012—Duane Morris is pleased to announce that the Honorable Ronald D. Castille, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, presented Duane Morris with a Supreme Court admission certificate, posthumously, for noted African-American legal scholar and abolitionist George Boyer Vashon, who was rejected admission to the bar because of his race. The presentation took place in Philadelphia at Duane Morris' annual George Boyer Vashon Lecture: The Law & Politics of Affirmative Action on Friday, April 27, 2012.

George Vashon Admission Presentation

The George Boyer Vashon Lecture commemorates the life of George B. Vashon (b. 1824) by exploring issues of justice and fairness. In 2010, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court addressed the wrongness of discrimination against Vashon, based upon race, which was the law of the Commonwealth 163 years ago. The Vashon lecture deals with the intersection of politics, economics and law and its constant evolution.

The lecture, which also featured remarks by Randall L. Kennedy, the Raymond Pace and Sadie T.M. Alexander Visiting University of Pennsylvania Professor of Law in Civil Rights, the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard, and award-winning author, kicked off Duane Morris' firmwide annual Diversity Retreat. The program included a panel discussion, moderated by David L. Cohen, Executive Vice President, Comcast Corporation, featuring Joanne Epps, Dean and Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law; Sharmain Matlock-Turner, President and CEO, Urban Affairs Coalition; and Thomas G. Servodidio, Duane Morris partner and chair of the Employment, Labor, Benefits and Immigration Practice Group. Nolan N. Atkinson, Jr., partner and Chief Diversity Officer at Duane Morris and Vashon's great-grandson, welcomed these distinguished guests.

George VashonVashon twice sought admission to practice law in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, but was rejected in both cases because of his race. In October 2010, after Atkinson and others petitioned the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Vashon was officially admitted posthumously to the bar of the courts of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

As a teenager, alongside his father, who was an abolitionist and well-respected leader in the black community, Vashon co-founded the Pittsburgh anti-slavery society in 1838. He attended Oberlin College, where he was the first African-American to receive a bachelor's degree. After he was denied the right to practice law in Allegheny County, he moved to New York and became the first licensed African-American attorney in that state. Later returning to Pittsburgh, Vashon became a principal at an African-American public school and served as president of Avery College. Vashon moved to Washington, D.C., where he was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and, in 1867, became the first negro to teach at Howard University. Vashon died in Mississippi in 1878 during a yellow-fever epidemic.

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