In 2006, the Bush administration authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to wiretap the phones of American citizens without a warrant. Amid a lawsuit filed against the president by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), one federal judge challenged the program’s constitutionality and halted it on the basis of First and Fourth Amendment violations — Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ’54.
In her ruling, the former economics major delivered a powerful rebuke, reminding the president that “there are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution.”
Taylor’s decision sparked intense criticism, but facing scrutiny was nothing new for her. As a Black woman in the judiciary, she had spent her career pushing against the barriers of race and gender. One of the five women in her 1957 graduating class at Yale Law, she entered a legal world that largely shut out Black women from professional opportunities. With the multiyear celebration of the Zora Neale Hurston Centennial and 100 Years of Black Students at Barnard kicking off earlier this semester, the College is honoring Black alumnae — like Hurston and Taylor — who persevered and excelled against societal biases.
Taylor, who was born Anna Katherine Johnston in 1932 in Washington, D.C., to public school teacher Hazel Bramlette Johnston and Howard University treasurer Virginius Douglass Johnston, did not always envision herself as a federal judge — let alone as the first Black woman to be appointed to the U.S. District Court in eastern Michigan. “I never dreamed of becoming a judge. All I wanted to be was a lawyer,” she shared in the Spring 1980 issue of the Barnard Alumnae Magazine.
Barnard forced me to develop strength of character.
After her stint as an attorney for the Office of the Solicitor of the U.S. Department of Labor from 1957 to 1960, Taylor moved to her then-husband Congressman Charles C. Diggs Jr.’s home state of Michigan. She worked in private practice and then as an assistant prosecutor for Wayne County, an adjunct law professor at Wayne State University Law School, and an assistant corporation counselor for the City of Detroit Law Department.
As a lawyer during the 1960s, Taylor leveraged her expertise to advance civil rights. During the “Freedom Summer” of 1964, she left Michigan to join other lawyers in Mississippi to represent civil rights workers who had been jailed for registering Black people to vote. Of the 70 attorneys that were part of the National Lawyers Guild’s mission, Diggs was one of only two Black volunteers, along with Claudia Shropshire (later Judge Claudia House Morcom).
But advocacy came at a cost. During their mission, a group of angry white individuals approached Taylor’s group, hurling slurs and insults. Despite being in fear for her life during the experience, Taylor remained committed to advance Black empowerment. During the 1970s, she contributed to the campaign that resulted in the election of Michigan’s first Black mayor, Coleman Young.
Recognizing Taylor’s contributions to Detroit as a practicing lawyer, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the federal bench in 1979, where she later became the court’s chief justice (1996–1998). Leaning on her labor-oriented legal background, Taylor presided over many high-profile cases during a wave of hostile corporate takeovers and management buyouts during the 1980s.
By the time of her retirement in 2011, the head judge had received multiple accolades, including the National Bar Association Women Lawyers Division Award in 1981, the 1986 Sojourner Truth Award, and the 2006 “Woman of the Year” award on behalf of the Michigan chapter of the National Organization for Women.
Throughout her career, Taylor never lost sight of her time at Barnard. “Barnard forced me to develop strength of character,” she said in a 2004 alumna profile for Barnard Magazine, where she also paid tribute to the fifth president of the College, Millicent McIntosh. “[She] was the essence of the view that women could do anything that anyone else in the world could do. And that was unusual talk at the time.” In 2004, the College honored Taylor with the Distinguished Alumna Award.
Taylor died in 2017 in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, at age 84.
“You Oughta Know” is produced in collaboration with the Barnard Archives and Special Collections.
—TARA TERRANOVA ’25
