Jewel LaFontant-MANkarious Papers

Jewel Carter Stradford was born April 28, 1922, to an upper middle class African-American family in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother, Aida Carter Stradford (d. 1972), was an artist and homemaker, and her father, C. Francis Stradford (1892-1963; AB 1912), was a prominent attorney on Chicago’s south side. Her grandfather, JB Stradford (d. 1935; Oberlin Academy 1882-85), had also been a lawyer. To understand the creator of these personal papers, who was born into a proud family of achievement, one must appreciate not only her class and race but also that she was third generation college educated.

Her father, CF Stradford, was a founder of the National Bar Association in 1925. He was one of a group of attorneys, including Irvin C. Mollison (Oberlin College 1916-17), who argued the case of Hansberry et al. v. Lee et al. (311 U.S. 32) before the U.S. Supreme Court. In this landmark 1940 case, the nation’s highest court abolished the restrictive covenants on the use of land that had limited racial integration in Chicago neighborhoods. Another notable experience in the legal career of CF Stradford was representing his father JB Stradford following the historically significant Tulsa race riots of 1921.

After earning a law degree from Indiana University in 1899, JB Stradford relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma. There he was a prominent member of the African-American community, serving as an attorney and as the proprietor of the only Black-owned hotel in Tulsa. In May of 1921, JB Stradford led a protest against the arrest and lynching of a Jewish man. A week later, a rumor circulated that a young white woman had been assaulted. This accusation or charge set off a riot, leading the local police to arrest JB Stradford on charges of inciting the riot. Local authorities released him on a writ of habeas corpus filed by his son CF Stradford, who then assisted his father to sneak out of Oklahoma, probably saving his life.

Regarding family accounts of the aforementioned incident, Jewel Stradford later admitted that it led her to consider “being a lawyer...because you can save lives” (Jet, June 23, 1997). Apparently, by the time she reached the age of fourteen, Jewel knew that she wanted to become an attorney of law. The family resided at 4937 Washington Park Court, and she attended Englewood Public High School in Chicago. During her summers, Jewel worked in her father’s law office. Then, in the fall of 1939, she followed in the footsteps of her father, grandfather, and grandmother Bertie Wiley Stradford (d. 1904; Oberlin Academy 1876-79) by entering Oberlin College to major in political science. Dascomb Cottage, which then housed 49 young women, was her residence hall. While at Oberlin, all indicators suggest that Jewel was a solid student, active in extra-curricular activities. One classmate recalled, though, that she was “a very quiet member of the class of 1943.” She spent time at the Phillis Wheatley Center and was the president of the Liberal Club, a prominent Student Senate sponsored campus organization. In addition, she was captain of her class volleyball team, secretary of the Sports Board, and a member of the Forensic Union, Cosmopolitan Club, Women’s Athletic Association, and Musical Union. In 1943, at the 110th Anniversary Commencement, Jewel graduated with an AB degree in political science.

Spurning the advice of others that social work was a more suitable career for a woman, she enrolled at the University of Chicago Law School. In 1946, upon her graduation, Jewel C. Stradford became the first Black woman to receive a Doctor of Laws degree from that prestigious urban institution. Her admittance to the Illinois Bar in 1947 did not bring immediate employment or success. Jewel was unable to find a place in any of the major Chicago law firms or to obtain law office space in downtown Chicago. She was initially refused membership in the Chicago Bar Association, though she was later admitted. She was the second woman to serve on the local association’s board of managers. After volunteering at the Social Security Administration for six months in 1947, she became a trial attorney for the Chicago Legal Aid Society, where she handled landlord-tenant disputes from 1947 to 1953.

While attending the University of Chicago Law School, she met John W. Rogers (b. 1918), a fellow student. They were married on December 7, 1946. Rogers, who later became a circuit court judge, received his law degree in 1948. The following year Jewel and John Rogers went into practice together in the law firm, Rogers, Rogers, and Strayhorn (later Rogers, Rogers, Strayhorn, and Harth).

As a law student at the University of Chicago, Jewel Stradford was politically active. This included participating in sit-ins in Chicago restaurants with other members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). In a 1991 Chicago Sun-Times interview, she recalled those activist days: “Often we were spat upon and physically abused,” but ultimately able to shut down a number of segregated restaurants. She continued her activism on behalf of civil rights over the next decade, even serving as secretary of the Chicago branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1948 to 1952. Almost concurrently, from 1948 to 1954, she served on the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

From the beginning of her legal career, Jewel Stradford Rogers understood the importance and value of developing a network of personal contacts and sponsors. She used her memberships in clubs and legal associations, and, later, on corporate boards and federal commissions, to make and sustain these contacts. Upon entering the legal profession, she joined the National Bar Association (NBA) (also serving as NBA secretary from 1956-64), the Cook County Bar Association, and the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois. She later joined numerous social and business organizations, including the Northeasterners Club, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, the Economic Club of Chicago, and the Commercial Club of Chicago.

In May 1955, on the recommendation of Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen (1896-1969), President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Jewel Rogers assistant US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. In this position she primarily handled immigration and deportation matters until she resigned in May 1958, following the birth of her son, John W. Rogers, Jr. Jewel Rogers’ and her husband divorced in 1961 after 14 years of marriage.

Later that year, Jewel S. Rogers married H. Ernest LaFontant (1923-76), a native of Haiti, whom she had met in the late 1950s while he was a student at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. After receiving his law degree in 1959, he was appointed honorary Consul for Haiti in Chicago. In 1961, the LaFontants went into practice with her father CF Stradford in the firm Stradford, LaFontant, & LaFontant.

In 1963, Jewel Stradford LaFontant argued for the petitioner, and won, her first case before the United States Supreme Court. In Beatrice Lynum v. State of Illinois (368 U.S. 908), LaFontant argued that the confession of her client, Beatrice Lynum, was not legally admissible (involuntary admissions) since the police had coerced Lynum, violating due process of the law by threatening to take her children. The Court agreed, and this decision became case law. The 1966 landmark constitutional law case Miranda v. the State of Arizona drew upon it. Years later, in a series of 1994 interviews for Jobs for Youth/Chicago, Jewel said that she believed that this precedent-setting case was the most important one in her career as a lawyer.

During the early 1960s, Jewel became increasingly active in the Republican Party. She was a lifelong Republican, carrying on the political legacy of her parents and grandfather, JB Stradford. Although the issues she championed, such as civil rights and women’s rights, now belonged to the Democratic Party, and she supported a number of Democratic candidates over the years, Jewel concluded that she could likely be a more effective voice as a member of the Republican Party. She was troubled by the Democratic Party politics she saw in Chicago while Richard J. Daley (d. 1976) was mayor; and, she concluded that Chicago’s Democrats took the votes of Black Americans for granted.

Republican party leaders saw Jewel, a prominent Black woman and attorney, as a rising star. Jewel was quickly named a member of the Illinois delegation to the 1960 Republican National Convention in Chicago. There she seconded the nomination of Richard M. Nixon for President. She was then called up to serve as a civil rights advisor for Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge during his 1960 Vice-Presidential Campaign. In 1962 Jewel LaFontant, running on the Republican ticket, became the first woman nominated for a seat on the Superior Court in Illinois. This judicial campaign was unsuccessful, as was her subsequent 1970 campaign for a seat on the Appellate Court.

State and federal officials had long recognized Jewel Stradford LaFontant’s political influence and savvy. After she stepped down as assistant U.S. District Attorney in 1958, President Eisenhower appointed her as a member of the Illinois Advisory Committee to the Federal Civil Rights Commission. This was the first of many federal commissions that she would serve on, including the U.S. Advisory Commission on International Education and Cultural Affairs, the President’s Council on Minority Business Enterprise, the National Council on Educational Research, the President’s Commission on Executive Exchange, and the Executive Committee of the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control.

In 1972 President Nixon named Jewel S. LaFontant a representative to the United Nations General Assembly. Later that same year, Nixon made LaFontant the highest-ranking woman in his second administration when he appointed her U.S. Deputy Solicitor General. She was the first woman and the first African American to hold such a high post in the Solicitor General’s office. As Deputy Solicitor General, LaFontant represented the United States in preparing and arguing numerous cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. In this position she would serve briefly under Erwin N. Griswold (1904-94; AB, AM 1925) until he retired in 1973, after which time Robert H. Bork (b. 1927) became U.S. Solicitor General. In 1987 Ronald Reagan appointed Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Jewel LaFontant was brought in to the spotlight as the only prominent Black woman to support his nomination to the highest court. The U.S. Senate did not, however, confirm Bork’s nomination.

In order to spend more time with her family, Jewel made the difficult decision to resign her post as Deputy Solicitor General in 1975. Her son John Rogers Jr. (called Johnny by his mother) was already in high school. He was always a very important part of Jewel’s life, although from the nation’s capital, it was often hard to balance the demands of being a mother against a time-consuming legal career. When he was very young, his grandmother, Aida Stradford, often took care of Johnny to allow his mother to pursue her career, but Jewel still found herself frequently having to take her young son to court with her. John Jr. divided his time with his parents. During most of his childhood he spent the week with his mother and the weekends with his father. Earlier, when Jewel had become Deputy Solicitor General in 1973, her son decided to live with his father rather than relocate with his mother to Washington, D.C. Jewel flew back to Chicago most weekends to be with her son and husband. John Rogers Jr. did not continue the family legal tradition and become a lawyer. Instead, following his graduation from Princeton University in 1980, he went to work in finance. In 1983 he founded Ariel Capital Management, and his mother, Jewel, was an active member of its board of directors from 1983 to 1997.

By the 1960s and 1970s, it was clear that Jewel was breaking barriers of gender and race. Jewel’s service on the male-dominated board of the Chicago Bar Association caught the attention of Wes Westopherson, president of the Jewel Companies (parent company of the Jewel Food Market chain). He was so impressed by her record that he asked her to become one of the first two women to serve on the company’s board. This board membership led to her being considered and recruited for the Board of Directors of Trans World Airlines in 1972. Over the next two decades Jewel served on about twenty corporate boards, including the Mobil Corporation, Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, Harte-Hanks Communications, the Hanes Corporation, and the Bendix Corporation. She welcomed these opportunities to serve on corporate boards so that she could be a compelling voice for the concerns of women, Black Americans, and other underrepresented populations.

In addition to her service on corporate boards, Jewel served on the boards of a number of non-profit organizations (including the Illinois Humane Society and Chicago’s Provident Hospital) and was a trustee of Oberlin College, Howard University (Washington, D.C.), Lake Forest College (Illinois), and Tuskegee Institute (Alabama). During her service on the Oberlin Board of Trustees, from 1981 to 1986, the Board dealt with social issues such as South African divestment. She was not, however, an active trustee since her corporate board memberships created an assortment of scheduling conflicts and thus she missed many meetings.

In 1976, her husband H. Ernest LaFontant died, and Jewel LaFontant became president and senior partner of the law firm, Stradford, LaFontant, Fisher, & Malkin. This firm was the successor of the firm Stradford, LaFontant, & LaFontant, which Jewel LaFontant had founded with her father and husband. The firm later became LaFontant, Wilkins, Jones, & Ware, and Jewel LaFontant served as its president until she left it in 1983 to join the firm Vedder, Price, Kaufman, & Kammholz. With offices in Washington, D.C. and New York as well as Chicago, this law firm had the resources to better serve her increasingly corporate clientele.

Jewel LaFontant had been friends with George H.W. Bush since meeting him in 1972 when he was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations General Assembly. She subsequently supported him in his 1980 bid for president and was one of his close advisors during his 1988 campaign. As a member of both the State of Illinois and the National Finance Committees, she worked on the party’s behalf to solicit donations and organize fundraisers. She also attended the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans as a delegate member for Illinois. Following his election as president, George Bush rewarded her party support and her many achievements by naming Jewel Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator of Refugee Affairs for the State Department.

Soon after moving to Washington, D.C. to take up this post, Jewel Stradford LaFontant married her third husband, the Egyptian-born Naguib S. MANkarious (1927-2000). MANkarious, an international business consultant, became a U.S. citizen in 1980. The couple met in 1987 when she was asked to be the first woman member of the Rotary Club of Chicago. At the time, MANkarious was serving as the Club's Vice-President. He followed Jewel to Washington and proposed, and they were married in December 1989.

As Coordinator of Refugee Affairs, Ambassador LaFontant-MANkarious monitored refugee situations worldwide, offered recommendations to President Bush and the U.S. Congress regarding refugee policies, particularly admittance to the U.S., and met with foreign officials, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She held this position during a time when there were massive outpourings of refugees from the former Soviet Union and when Mozambican refugees were flooding into Malawi and South Africa. This public service required her to travel extensively to meet with foreign officials and to view firsthand the conditions in refugee centers around the world. She used these visits to focus public attention on the plight of refugees. When President Bush left office in 1993, Jewel returned to Chicago where she joined the law firm of Holleb & Coff.

Throughout her distinguished career, Jewel received many honors for her professional success as well as her dedication to social causes. She was the recipient of more than a dozen honorary doctorates, most notably from Oberlin College (1979), Howard University (1973), and Roosevelt University (1990). She was the second North American woman to be named a fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers in 1984, and she received numerous awards recognizing her legal work, including the Cook County Bar Association Achievement Award (1956), the Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Award (1989) from B’nai B’rith International, and the Wiley A. Branton Issues Symposium Award (1991) from the National Bar Association. Awards honoring her humanitarian work include the 1994 International Humanitarian Award from the CARE Foundation, the Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America Humanitarian Award (c. 1982), and the 1992 Award for Internationalism from the American Women for International Understanding.

Jewel LaFontant-MANkarious died of breast cancer in Chicago on May 31, 1997. Naguib MANkarious subsequently married Marilyn Miglin, the widow of wealthy developer Lee Miglin, who was slain by a serial killer in Chicago on May 4, 1997.

For more information about Jewel LaFontant’s life and career up to 1978, see chapter “Jewel Stradford LaFontant” in Women Lawyers at Work by Elinor Porter Swiger (New York: Julian Messner, 1978).

Sources Consulted

Student files of Jewel Stradford LaFontant-MANkarious and JB Stradford (RG 28).

Jobs for Youth/Chicago Interviews of Jewel LaFontant-MANkarious, May 27 and June 23, 1994 (transcripts in Series XXI).

Jewel LaFontant-MANkarious Papers (OCA 30/310), Series IV. Biographical Files and Series XVIII. Publicity and Public Relations.

Swiger, Elinor Porter. Women Lawyers at Work. New York: Julian Messner, 1978.

BIOGRAPHICAL TIMELINE

1922, April 28: Born, Chicago, Illinois

1943: Graduated from Oberlin College; AB in Political Science

1946: Married John Rogers; Awarded Doctor of Law degree from the University of Chicago Law School

1947: Admitted to Illinois Bar

1947-53: Trial lawyer, Legal Aid Bureau of United Charities of Chicago

1948-52: Secretary, Chicago branch of NAACP

1948-54: Board of Directors, American Civil Liberties Union

1949: Chosen as member of United Nations Study Group from Chicago YMCA

1949: Opened law firm with husband John in Chicago (Rogers, Rogers, and Strayhorn)

1955-58: Became first Black woman named Assistant U.S. Attorney (for the Northern District of Illinois)

1956-64: Secretary, National Bar Association

1958: Birth of son John W. Rogers, Jr.

1960: Alternate delegate at 1960 Republican National Convention, seconds Richard Nixon’s nomination for the Presidency; Served as Civil Rights Advisor to Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge during his campaign for Vice-President

1961: Divorced first husband, John Rogers; Married second husband, H. Ernest LaFontant; Formed law firm Stradford, LaFontant, & LaFontant with H. Ernest LaFontant and her father, C. Francis Stradford

1962: Endorsed by the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois as qualified to sit as Judge of the Superior Court; Appointed to the Advisory Committee to the Fair Employment Practices Commission; Unsuccessful campaign for Superior Court in Cook County, Illinois

1962-66: Advisor, Illinois State Treasurer’s Office, Inheritance Tax Division

1965-67, 1970-73: Member of President’s Council on Minority Business Enterprise

1969-73: Appointed by Nixon as vice-chairman of the U.S. Advisory Commission on International Educational and Cultural Affairs

1970: Unsuccessful campaign for the Illinois Appellate Court

1971-73: Member, Board of Directors, Jewel Companies, Inc. (one of the first two women directors of this company)

1972: Appointed by Nixon as representative to the United Nations

1972-85: Member, Board of Directors, Trans World Airlines

1973: Appointed United States delegate to the United Nations General Assembly

1973-75: Named by Nixon to the post of Deputy Solicitor General of the United States (becoming the first woman to hold this position)

1975-85: Member, Board of Directors, Continental Bank

1975-86: Member, Board of Directors, Transworld Corporation

1976: Second husband, H. Ernest Lafontant, died

1976-83: President and senior partner of Chicago law firm, Stradford, LaFontant, Fisher, & Malkin (later, LaFontant, Wilkins, Jones, & Ware)

1977-1980s: Member, Board of Directors, The Equitable

1979-86: Member, Board of Directors, Pantry Pride

1981-89: Member, Board of Directors, Mobil Corporation

1983-89: Senior partner at Vedder, Price, Kaufman, & Kammholz (Chicago and Washington, D.C.)

1983-88: Member, Board of Directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

1983-97: Member, Board of Directors, Ariel Capital Management

1984: Second North American woman to be named a fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers

1985: Admitted to Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals

1985-1990s: Member, Board of Directors, Revlon, Inc.

1988-1990s: Became first woman chosen for GenCorp’s board of directors; Member, Board of Directors, Midway Airlines

1989-1993: Member of the State Department as Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Refugee Affairs under President George Bush

1989: Married third husband, Naguib Soby MANkarious

1993: Became a partner at Holleb & Coff, a Chicago law firm

1997, May 31: Died, Chicago, Illinois

Note written by Melissa Gottwald.