Cora Walker

Cora Thomasina Walker (June 20, 1922—July 13, 2006) was an influential Harlem lawyer and one of the first black women to practice law in the state of New York.

Cora Walker was born on June 20, 1922, in Charlotte, NC to William and Benetta Jones Walker. Her parents separated when she was an adolescent, and she, her mother, and her eight siblings dependent on public assistance. When Cora graduated from James Monroe High School, she began to both support her family with two jobs and enrolled in a six-year program at St. John's University in which students earned both a bachelor's and a law degree. She graduated in 1946. As a black woman in the 1940s, she found it difficult to find a work after she was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1947, so she started her own practice in Harlem, where she represented residents in the neighborhood until her retirement in 1999. From 1976 to 1999, she was the senior partner in Walker & Bailey, a black law firm which she established with her son. She ran for the New York State Senate in 1958 and 1964. In the 1950s or 60s, Cora Walker became The Harlem Lawyers Association's first female president. In 1970, the New York Times listed her as one of the most powerful people in Harlem. In 1988, Ms. Walker, then the chair of the National Bar Association Commercial Law Section, founded the Corporate Counsel Conference to connect corporations with the counsel of African-American attorneys.

Ms. Walker was married to, then divorced from, fellow lawyer Lawrence Bailey, with whom she had two sons, Lawrence Jr., and Bruce E. Bailey. Beginning in 2005, The National Bar Association Commercial Law Section began giving out an award honoring Ms. Walker.