e is among the neglected heroes of American history. A pioneer of civil rights, Robert Morris was the second African American to gain admission to a state bar in the United States; in his case, Massachusetts, where he laid the foundation for equality.


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“Let us be bold, if any man fl ies from slavery and comes among us,” he said in 1858 at an antislavery rally in aboli- tionist New Bedford, Massachusetts. “When he’s reached us, we’ll say, he’s gone far enough. If any comes here to New Bedford, and they try to take him away, you telegraph to us in Boston, and we’ll come down, three hundred strong, and stay with you; and we won’t go, until he’s safe.”1 Morris, whose heroes included slave rebels Denmark


Vesey and Nat Turner, was only 35 years old when he spoke those defi ant words, but his legacy was already fi rmly established. In 1848, he became the fi rst African-American lawyer to win a jury trial. He later led the Shadrach Minkins rescue eff ort—one of the antebellum period’s most daring fugitive slave rescues—and had represented four- year-old Sarah Roberts, together with acclaimed abolition attorney Charles Sumner, in the historic Roberts v. Boston Public Schools2


integration case. Two years later, in 1836, Boston abolitionist Ellis Gray


Loring came to dine at the King family’s T anksgiving din- ner. T e blue-blooded Harvard graduate was so impressed by Morris that, the next day, he transported the teenager to Boston, where Morris became his family’s house servant. Loring was one of the founders of the New England


Anti-Slavery Society and had represented a six-year-old slave girl who had been brought into the free state of Massachusetts. T e case resulted in a landmark decision protecting the rights of free blacks because it concluded that a slave was free the moment he or she set foot in a free state. Morris proved to be such a capable house attendant that


“There was something in the courtroom that made me feel like a giant. [It] was filled with colored people and I could see, expressed on the faces of every one of them, a wish I might succeed.” –Robert Morris


Born in Salem, Massachusetts, the grandson of a slave,


Morris inherited the pleasing personality of his father, Yorkshire, a popular waiter and leader of that city’s black community. Only 11 years old when his father died, young Morris began waiting tables and became the favorite of the local lawyers. One of them, John King, hired him to be his house servant.


JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 DIVERSITY & THE BAR®


when a young scrivener at Loring’s law offi ce failed to meet expectations, Loring decided to add the copyist’s duties to Morris’ household chores. One day, Loring surprised the youth with a life-changing proposition. “Robert, you are capable of making something of yourself,” Loring said. “Now I want you to tell me what you want to do. … Do you wish to learn a trade, or do you wish to study law?”3 Morris chose the law, and thereaf-


ter he and Loring, who did not have children, regularly went to court together. One newspaper commented that the two appeared like father and son. Morris became an active member of the antislavery movement and Boston’s black community. He joined the Young Men’s Literary


Society—a black organization dedicated to educating young blacks—and joined the New England Freedom Association, a black forerunner of the later, famous Boston Vigilance Committee, the city’s Underground Railroad organization. Morris also joined in the civil rights eff orts led by John Hilton, a Revolutionary War veteran, and William Nell, an associate of William Lloyd Garrison.


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