Emma Coleman Jordan

Tributes in Memory of Professor Derrick Bell

Emma Coleman Jordan
Georgetown Law

Thank you for sharing Derrick. There was no one else like him in all of legal education. He forged a path of creative engagement. He brought everything he had to the enterprise. He loved gospel music, he wrote at his computer to the sounds of classical music. I will never forget his two blue-grey eyed Weimaraner dogs in your apartment on Central Park West. They were so odd, but he clearly loved them.

Derrick radiated love, for you, for Jewel, for Carter, Douglass, and Derrick, for his students and younger colleagues. My best times with Derrick were when he came to DC to his best friend,Don’s house on Capitol Hill in DC for his birthday celebrations.

He had a way of lifting you up, even while expecting more. Like my own Dad, he would gently inquire about my productivity gaps, or whether my grades had been turned in before Christmas. He supported us in good times and bad. Most importantly, he showed me, with his actions,how to be a law professor, what to do with the rare leadership opportunity. I was with Derrick, Ginger and Jerry Patterson in Adams Morgan listening to Julia Nixon exhale mightily from her magnificent pipes., when he told me that he had heard that I would be nominated to be President of AALS. He was more senior, and more distinguished, but he celebrated my opportunity. He reminded me of my responsibilities.

I will miss him terribly. But, for me, he will always be the still, small voice of racial pride inside reminding me to give it my all in law teaching and in the larger world outside of academic life..

Emma Coleman Jordan