Walker returns to his legal roots at Lawyer’s Committee

Yawu Miller

While attending Boston College Law School in the late 1970s, Chuck Walker wanted nothing more than to be an entertainment lawyer.

“I was going to represent movie stars — do the whole California thing,” he says.

But graduating the same year as Walker were some of the black attorneys who would be some of the most active in Boston’s black community — including former Northeastern Law School Provost David Hall, former Suffolk County District Attorney Ralph Martin, Havard Law Professor Charles Ogletree, political activist and attorney Eddie Jenkins and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Bob Gittens.

Then there was his mentor, David Nelson, the first black Federal District Court judge in Massachusetts history.

“He took a real interest in me,” Walker says. “I don’t know why.”

After serving as a clerk under Nelson’s tutelage as well as a stint with the Roe v. Wade plaintiff’s attorney Sarah Weddington and Judge Fred Brown, Walker became fascinated with the potential impact of law on public policy and social change.

“I learned there is an inextricable tie social issues and the law, and how effective the law can be,” he says.

Walker, who in December took the reigns at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights for Law of the Boston Bar Association in December was destined for a career in civil rights law, whether he knew it or not.

The son of an Tuskegee airman and Air Force RANK, Walker was born in Alaska in 1951. After living in Kentucky, Germany and France, he spent his youth in Camarillo, Calif. There, in 1961, he met President John Kennedy, who was there to visit Oxnard Air Force Base where Walker’s father was then stationed.

Walker remembers shaking hands with the president, whom his family revered. It was shortly thereafter that Kennedy convened a meeting of 244 activist attorneys from across the country, calling on them to bring forward the cases that would enforce the civil rights laws of the ’50s and ’60s.

Bar associations, including the Boston Bar Association, then founded Lawyer’s Committees for Civil Rights, prosecuting the cases which — in the case of Boston — led to de-segregation of schools, public housing developments and police and fire departments.

After Boston College, Walker went on to serve as an assistant attorney general under Francis Bellotti, defending the constitutionality of state laws.

After a stint teaching at New England School of Law, he served as counsel to former Elder Affairs Secretary Franklyn Olivierre.

In 1994, Walker served as chairman of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination — the state’s primary civil rights enforcement agency — taking over as commissioner from 1997 to 2000. He also served as president of the Black Lawyers Association from 1993 to 1995.

In 2000, Walker began a stint as an administrative judge in the Department of Industrial Accidents, where he made decisions on Workmen’s Compensation claims.

When Walker learned last year that former Executive Director David Harris was vacating his post, he jumped at the opportunity.

“I saw this as an incredible opportunity to come back to an area where I had my greatest passion,” he said.

The Lawyers Committee his five attorneys and three other staff members. The organization works in six major areas — voting rights, racial violence, environmental justice, education, employment discrimination and housing discrimination. The organization works with plaintiffs to build cases, then identifies attorneys in its 30 member firms who are willing to take the cases on.

In recent years and months, the Lawyers Committee has scored major victories, including upholding school desegregation in Lynn and challenging redistricting in Boston.

Walker says the work of the organization remains critical.

“You still have housing discrimination,” he said. “You still have predatory lending. You still have discrimination against people of color.”

Currently the organization is working on a discrimination case against Walmart, a discrimination case against another large retailer and an environmental discrimination case against a major university.

“We work with every civil rights organization in town and throughout the state,” Walker said. “And we’re also working on policy issues.”

Sitting in the conference room of the Lawyer’s Committee’s Washington St. office, Walker is surrounded by files of the organization’s recent cases. He smiles contentedly when talking about his work.

“You never really retire from civil rights,” he says. “You follow your passions. Sometimes there are missions put on you. Some you put on yourself. This is my raison d’etre.”