Robert M. Bell - Background

Background

Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, his parents soon moved to Baltimore, Maryland where he attended Dunbar High School. On June 17, 1960 Bell had his first experiences with the judicial system. While still in high school, he and a group of students participated in a sit-in protest at a segregated restaurant. The group entered Hooper's Restaurant, located at Charles and Fayette Streets, in downtown Baltimore and waited to be served. They were asked to leave, but twelve of the students, including the sixteen-year-old Bell, refused. He and the other students were arrested, convicted in the Circuit Court of Baltimore City of criminal trespassing, and fined $10. The case was appealed to the Maryland Court of Appeals, where the students' representation included Juanita Jackson Mitchell and Thurgood Marshall. The appellants argued that the use of the state's trespassing laws to support segregation of public accommodations violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In 1962, the Court of Appeals upheld the decision of the circuit court.

The case was then appealed to the U.S Supreme Court, where Bell was represented by Constance Baker Motley and Jack Greenberg. In the 1964 case of Bell v. Maryland, the U.S. Supreme Court, noting that in the period since the conviction the Maryland General Assembly had passed a public accommodations law, refused to rule whether the state's trespassing laws could be used to exclude blacks from public accommodations, but vacated the decision and remanded the case to allow the state court to rule whether the conviction should be reversed due to the change in state law. On April 9, 1965, Bell's conviction was reversed by the state Court of Appeals and all of the students were cleared of all charges. Ironically, after the Supreme Court's decision, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations such as those provided in Hooper's Baltimore restaurant. It has been suggested that the Supreme Court refrained from reaching the merits in the case in consideration of this civil rights legislation, which was then pending in Congress, as had it done so it would have eliminated the basis for passing the Act.

Bell later attended and graduated with a B.A. in history from Morgan State University in Baltimore in 1966 and while there became a brother in Alpha Phi Omega. He then was admitted to Harvard Law School where he earned his J.D. in 1969. That same year he was admitted to the bar and began his legal practice in Baltimore.