Gabrielle Kirk Mc Donald - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

McDonald was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota on April 12, 1942 to her late mother Frances Retta English and late father, James G. Kirk, Jr. In her September 1998 interview with St. Paul Magazine, McDonald remembered her mother as an ambitious woman with dreams of pursing a career in acting and writing. Her father was a World War II veteran and like his father, worked as a dining car waiter for the Northern Pacific Railway. Her parents divorced in 1944, shortly after McDonald's brother, James G. Kirk III was born. Frances English Kirk soon thereafter moved to New York with her two children. Living in East Harlem, Frances Kirk worked as a secretary for various newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses. When McDonald was eight years old, she and her mother moved to Riverdale, New York. McDonald has often spoken about her mother's refusal to accept prejudice and discrimination, which include her confrontation with a racist landlord who wanted to evict Frances from her apartment when he learned that her children were Negro. Frances Kirk refused to budge. Born of a Swedish mother and an African-American father, Frances was light-complected and many believed she was Caucasian. In the 2004 Horatio Alger Award short biographical film, McDonald also spoke about an incident where a taxi driver apologized to her mother for the unpleasant smell in his car because a previous passenger had been an African-American. Seeing her mother challenge these incidents taught McDonald early in her life that "you just don't sit back quietly . . . you say something."

The family eventually moved to Teaneck, New Jersey, where McDonald graduated from Teaneck High School. Tall and athletic, she played field hockey and was president of the girls' leadership club. Her yearbook states that she is one of the "nicest" and "most liked girls" in the class in which there was only one other African-American student. She attended Boston University (1959-1961) and Hunter College (1961-1963) for her undergraduate education.

In 1963, determined to become a civil rights lawyer, McDonald enrolled at Howard University School of Law. At Howard Law, she worked as a research assistant in her first year and in her second, earned a scholarship from the Ford Foundation. She went on to serve as secretary of the student bar association and Notes Editor for the Howard Law Journal. She graduated cum laude and first in her class. At the time, there were only 142 African-American women lawyers in the country.