Mary Johnson Lowe ’54 (1924–1999)
Lowe, who graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 1954, was the first Black editor-in-chief of the Brooklyn Law Review and, in 1978, the second Black woman appointed to..
more »Mary Johnson Lowe ’54 (1924–1999)
Lowe, who graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 1954, was the first Black editor-in-chief of the Brooklyn Law Review and, in 1978, the second Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary when named to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President Jimmy Carter. Earlier in her career, she served as an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and as a New York State Supreme Court justice. Her landmark 1984 decision in Pitts v. Black held that homeless New Yorkers could not be denied the right to register to vote. Remembered for her lifelong commitment to civil rights and equal access to justice, Lowe is honored by Brooklyn Law School as a “trailblazing jurist whose decisions advanced civil rights and gender equality.”
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