Very few legal minds have had the impact of the late Derrick Bell. The outspoken Harvard Law professor was not only the first black person to ever be granted tenure at the famous school, but he confronted the racist infrastructure of the institution itself through various protests rarely seen within the walls of academia. Harvard Law School continues to be racially segregated, only having given tenure to two black women in its nearly 200 year history, but the progress that has been made was owed greatly to the courageous work by Derrick Bell.Derrick Bell, a legal scholar who saw persistent racism in America and sought to expose it through books, articles and provocative career moves — he gave up a Harvard Law School professorship to protest the school’s hiring practices — died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 80 and lived on the Upper West Side.
The cause was carcinoid cancer, his wife, Janet Dewart Bell, said.
Mr. Bell was the first tenured black professor at Harvard Law School and later the first black dean of a law school that was not historically black. But he was perhaps better known for resigning from prestigious jobs than for accepting them.
While he was working at the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department in his 20s, his superiors told him to give up his membership in the N.A.A.C.P., believing it posed a conflict of interest. Instead he quit the department, ignoring the advice of friends to try to change it from within.
