Absences and Fantasies for the Future
Women and Justice for the Poor took me years to write and I was never sure of what direction it would take as I explored different archives. Like legal aid itself, my book was built from the ground up.
My sources for the women’s organisations that provided legal assistance were primarily comÂposed of annual reports. These reports existed because such organisations were private philanthropies that had to constantly appeal to their memberÂships for funding. Thus, in some cases, it became crucial to read between the lines, such as asking who was being mentioned and who was not, who was funding the organisation, and who was contributing. Although I spent years trying to find the personal papers of some of the women lawÂyers and lay lawyers who provided legal aid, I came up with very little material. It is still my dream to find a diary or case records. For my research on social work, I had to take a disciplinary leap and poured through conÂference reports of various associations of social workers, course catalogues for a variety of schools of social work, as well as the personal papers of leading women social workers. Although this sounds like a truism, what archives historians explore very much dictate the story that we tell. Yet, as expected, the most complete documents were those from the archives of elite male lawyers. If I had only used these archives, my history of legal aid would have looked significantly different.Finally, I want to elaborate on some of the subjects missing from my book not as an apologia but as an agenda for future scholars. I have a number of regrets about the holes left in my book. Legal aid in the U.S. was always a deeply local affair with organisations serving specific citÂies. Although I provided a sampling of cities on the East Coast, in the Mid-West, and in the South, I did not explore legal assistance on the West Coast, simply due to the reality of funds and time.
San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century could have been particularly interesting as the legal bar was less elite and powerful than on the East coast. Likewise, the thick net of women’s associations that existed on the East Coast extended to the West Coast. Moreover, the ethnic make-up of clients of legal aid may have differed significantly, due to its large Asian and Mexican populations. Likewise, as Mia Korpiola’s chapter in this book illuminates, there remains a significant lacuna in thinking about legal assistance in rural areas.In my work, there are also some deep absences regarding Black organÂisations that may have provided civil legal assistance to other Blacks. Although I was able to locate in newspapers the existence of such groups, I was unable to locate documents in archives.[979] It is my growing sense that I was looking in the wrong archives and I continue to search for such documents. Moreover, as I explain in my book, many of the leads that I did have pointed to a variety of organisations for Black people, including women’s organisations, raising funds to hire lawyers to represent Black men accused of serious crimes. In a racist society, in which the outcome of what would happen to a wrongly convicted Black man was so high, this might very well have been a priority.[980]
Another regret is that I, like all the authors of the chapters in this book, was unable to find a significant number of documents describing what it was like to be a client of legal aid. Although I did locate some letters from clients to legal aid societies, I was not fully able to describe what it might have been like to be a client. I searched through immigrant newspapers, employed translators, read autobiographies and biographies of workingÂclass reformers, and even listened to folk songs to little avail. This makes me wonder whether legal aid affected the legal aid provider much more than it did the client. Legal aid was only one way in which the working class and poor attempted to survive.
Although, in my original work, I was unable to find that legal aid leadÂers had significant contact with legal aid providers in other countries, I have no doubt that such contacts existed. Both U.S. lawyers, social workÂers, and those involved in first-wave feminism were sophisticated individuÂals and many travelled to Europe regularly. In a second project, which I am still working on, I examine those who provided legal advice and help to people immigrating to the U.S. from 1900 to 1945. Like with legal aid more generally, women and social workers were crucially involved in this project. Chicago’s Immigrant’s Protective Association, always run by social workers, had vast international connections and worked closely with
other social workers throughout Europe and Latin America on immigraÂtion matters.105
In the end, what I hope readers take away from this chapter is less about the grand narrative of legal aid in the U.S., than the importance of quesÂtioning our received histories, and how historians can choose to build new histories that are broader and more inclusive. In order to do so, it requires us to fully engage our imaginations and to dream of new ways of narrating history. Likewise, it is incumbent upon us to look beyond traditional sources and take a wide and interdisciplinary approach in how we even chose to encounter and tackle our archives.