Baltimore’s Legacy of Movement Lawyering: Women Who Practice Law as Resistance

I only recently learned the phrase “movement lawyering.” Dorcas Gilmore, at Baltimore Action Legal Team, was the first to say it when I interviewed her for the Baltimore Legacy Project, and though I could gather its meaning from context, I still looked it up. What I found was a definition that landed like clarity:

Movement lawyers work in deep collaboration with social movements, leveraging every legal hook possible to build the collective power needed to transform our political and economic systems toward human dignity, multiracial democracy, and ecological harmony.

In other words: movement lawyers are the quiet strategists behind transformative struggles for justice. They are not simply attorneys; they are builders of possibility. Movement lawyers are not always the public face of social change; they are more likely to be its infrastructure. They draft the briefs, frame the arguments, anticipate the resistance. They do not simply defend clients.

They help construct the conditions under which justice might become plausible.

For example, Thurgood Marshall—whose courtroom victories cracked open the architecture of segregation—was shaped by Pauli Murray, a Baltimorean whose legal reasoning provided the intellectual backbone for both civil rights and gender equity litigation.

Juanita Jackson Mitchell, daughter of Baltimore Civil Rights leader, Lillie May Carroll Jackson, was not only the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Maryland School of Law she also founded and became president of the City-Wide Young People’s Forum of Baltimore and launched a “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign. And for all of the Western High School students and alumna, Ms. Mitchell is the lawyer who filed a lawsuit to integrate Western allowing Black girls to attend.

Lena K. Lee was one of the first Black women lawyers elected to the General Assembly, known as “The Fearless One” for her strong advocacy, similarly, former State Senator Jill P. Carter

–daughter of Baltimore Civil Rights leader Walter P. Carter was the third. Jill P. Carter has tirelessly pursued transparency, accountability, and fairness in Maryland’s legal system. It should be no surprise that she identifies Ms. Lee as a personal s/hero stating:

“everything about her gave me inspiration. Once she was this cute little dynamo, she was a small woman, but you know, with a big, big, big personality… She was authentic to the cause, and to our people…, I feel like to some extent, I owe a debt to her. And I owed it to her to carry out the legacy that she started in the Maryland General Assembly, to be a stand up person, to use your intellect, to use your legal training to, you know, be as sharp as possible.” -Jill P. Carter, Esq. (Baltimore Legacy Project interview)

Lena K. Lee, goes beyond law and civic responsibility, she also mentored future leaders, including Elijah Cummings, and established the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland in 1970.

And we cannot talk about Baltimore’s modern legal legacy without acknowledging former State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who made national headlines in 2015 when she indicted six

police officers in the death of Freddie Gray. At a time when few prosecutors were willing to challenge law enforcement, her decision marked a rare assertion of prosecutorial power and signaled a shift in the national conversation about accountability, policing, and justice.

These women are not just legal professionals; they are architects of Baltimore’s political and ethical evolution. Their work demonstrates that the law—often weaponized against marginalized communities—can also be reclaimed as a site of resistance, reconstruction, and radical possibility when wielded by people who understand its transformative power.

Movement lawyering is not an abstract concept; in Baltimore, it is a living tradition.

Yet for all our reverence of giants like Mitchell and Murray—whose contributions are rightly immortalized—we sometimes overlook the living legends among us. We speak their names with respect but don’t always seek out their wisdom while we still have the chance. Too often, we celebrate historical figures while underestimating the pioneers who continue to shape our civic landscape in real time.

That is a mistake we cannot afford to keep making.

This belief is at the core of why I felt compelled to interview living trailblazers for the BaltimoreLegacy Project. Their stories, insights, and experiences are not simply reflections of the past—they are tools for our future. They offer lessons about courage, strategy, endurance, and the creative ways Black Baltimore has navigated systems designed to contain and suppress our communities.