47 Facts About Derrick Bell

Derrick Bell started teaching at the University of Southern California, then moved to Harvard Law School where he became the first tenured African-American professor of law in 1971.

From 1991 until his death in 2011, Derrick Bell was a visiting professor at New York University School of Law, and a dean of the University of Oregon School of Law.

Derrick Bell developed important scholarship, writing many articles and multiple books, using his practical legal experience and his academic research to examine racism, particularly in the legal system.

Derrick Bell questioned civil rights advocacy approaches, partially stemming from frustrations in his own experiences as a lawyer.

Derrick Bell is often credited as one of the originators of critical race theory.

Derrick Bell was raised in a working-class family in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Derrick Bell's maternal grandfather, John Childress, was a blind cook on the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Derrick Bell's paternal grandfather was a minister in Dothan, Alabama.

Derrick Bell attended Schenley High School and was the first member of his family to go to college.

Derrick Bell was offered a scholarship to Lincoln University but could not attend due to a lack of financial aid, choosing to attend Duquesne University instead.

Derrick Bell then served as an officer for the United States Air Force for two years, one of which he spent in Korea.

In 1960, Bell married Jewel Hairston who was a Civil Rights activist and educator and they would go on to have three sons: Derrick, Douglas, and Carter.

Derrick Bell was one of the few Black lawyers working for the Justice Department at the time.

Derrick Bell was the first academic in law that created a casebook that explored and examined the law's impact and relationship on race and racism.

Rather than give up his NAACP membership and compromise his principles, Derrick Bell left the Justice Department.

Derrick Bell returned to Pittsburgh and joined the local chapter of the NAACP.

Derrick Bell would join the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in Pittsburgh, crafting legal strategies at the forefront of the battle to undo racist laws and segregation in schools.

Derrick Bell was assigned to Mississippi where during his trips to the state, he had to be very cautious.

Derrick Bell supported James Meredith's attempt to attend the Ole Miss Law School in 1962.

Later in life, Derrick Bell questioned the approach of integration they took in these school cases.

Derrick Bell spent the second half of his career working in academia until his death in 2011.

Derrick Bell worked towards the creation of what he considered a more inclusive faculty within institutions such as USC, Harvard, and NYU.

Derrick Bell was known to be respectful of all beliefs and his class was described by his students to be the "least indoctrinated class" in their law school.

Derrick Bell would give his students freedom to reach their own conclusions and to build their own arguments that could be reasonable, despite their political beliefs.

Bok promised that Derrick Bell would be "the first but not the last" of his Black hires.

In 1971, Derrick Bell became Harvard Law's first Black tenured professor.

Derrick Bell resigned from his position at Harvard in protest of the school's hiring procedures, specifically the absence of women of color on the staff.

In 1980, Derrick Bell started a five-year tenure as the Dean of the University of Oregon School of Law.

Later, Derrick Bell's tenure was interrupted by his resignation following a protest, due to the university's refusal to hire an Asian-American candidate he had chosen for a faculty position.

Derrick Bell related these issues to music in a book of parables and introduced the Bell Annual Gospel Choir Concert, which is a tradition at the school today.

The University of Oregon School of Law was not the only place Derrick Bell fought to create a more diverse and inclusive faculty.

In March 2012, five months after his death, Derrick Bell became the target of conservative media, including Breitbart and Sean Hannity, in an expose of President Barack Obama.

Derrick Bell's widow stated that Derrick Bell and Obama had "very little contact" after Obama's law school graduation.

In 1970, Derrick Bell published Race, Racism, and American Law, a textbook of more than a thousand pages containing the idea that racial progress would be achieved only when it aligned with white people's interests.

Derrick Bell is arguably the most influential source of thought critical of traditional civil rights discourse.

Derrick Bell's critique represented a challenge to the dominant liberal and conservative position on civil rights, race and the law.

Derrick Bell employed three major arguments in his analyses of racial patterns in American law: constitutional contradiction, the interest convergence principle, and the price of racial remedies.

Consequently, Derrick Bell comes to the conclusion that American educational systems should focus on improving the quality of education for Black students, as opposed to, national integration.

Derrick Bell continued writing about critical race theory after accepting a teaching position at Harvard University.

Derrick Bell worked alongside lawyers, activists, and legal scholars across the country.

Derrick Bell's theories were based on a number of propositions.

Between the years of 1970 and 1980 Derrick Bell published many pieces of work.

Derrick Bell wrote about how staying true to himself was how he was so successful.

Derrick Bell discussed the legal doctrine through his outsider narrative scholarship.

Derrick Bell's theories continue to be analyzed in legal discussions today, with legal professionals reflecting on his contributions to modern civil rights law.

Derrick Bell published a number of works of short fiction which deal with similar themes to his nonfiction works.

On October 5,2011, Derrick Bell died at the age of 80 from carcinoid cancer at St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City.