Mary Frances Berry

Mary Frances Berry (born February 17, 1938, Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.) is an American professor, writer, lawyer, and activist whose public service included work in three presidential administrations. A scholar of constitutional law and racial and gender inequity in American life, she was a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1980–2004), serving as chair from 1993 to 2004. Berry was also an outspoken advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment and critic of the South African government’s apartheid practices.

Early life and education

Berry was born into stark poverty in Nashville. Berry’s father, George Ford Berry, left the family when she was young, and, for a time, her mother, Frances Southall Berry, placed Mary Frances Berry and at least one of her siblings in an orphanage. Encouraged by her teachers, Mary Frances Berry graduated from a racially segregated high school in 1956, enrolled at Fisk University, and then transferred to Howard University, a historically Black university located in Washington, D.C. She graduated from Howard with a B.A. in 1961 and completed an M.A. in 1962 (both in history). Berry then studied at the University of Michigan, where she received a Ph.D. in American constitutional history in 1966 and a law degree in 1970.

Professional career

Berry has had a long career in higher education and was a faculty member at a number of institutions, including Central Michigan University, Eastern Michigan University, and the University of Maryland in College Park, where she directed the university’s African American Studies program and later served as provost (1974–76). She became the first African American woman to head a major university when she served as chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1976 to 1977. She taught there until 1980, and later taught history and law at Howard. From 1987 she was Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and professor of history and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Focus areas of Berry’s teaching and scholarship include the histories of American law, constitutional history, law and social policy, African American history, and women’s rights.

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Berry was assistant secretary for education in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, a position she held from 1977 to 1980. During the administration of Pres. Jimmy Carter, Berry was vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and became the first woman to head the commission. In 1984 she was dismissed from the commission, along with other critics of the Reagan administration. In November that same year, Berry and others were arrested during a sit-in at the South African embassy in protest of U.S. support of the South African government’s apartheid practices. The sit-in encouraged similar protests across the United States, and Berry later cofounded the Free South Africa Movement (FSAM). (In 2013 the South African government awarded Berry the Nelson Mandela Award for her role in the FSAM.)

Berry sued for her reinstatement to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which was finally ordered by the Federal District Court. Pres. Bill Clinton named her to head the organization in 1993, and she was reappointed in 1999. Berry served on the commission until 2004, when she resigned following conflict with the administration of Pres. George W. Bush. Key projects during her tenure included the study of policing practices in New York City, reporting on conditions on Native American reservations, securing passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 and the Civil Rights Act of 1991, and examining voter registration purge practices in Florida following the U.S. presidential election of 2000.

Publications

Berry is the author of many books and articles on the topics of racial and gender inequality, including Black Resistance/White Law: A History of Constitutional Racism in America (1971, expanded ed. 1994), which concluded that high-level government officials implemented laws that undermined minorities; Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (1982); and The Politics of Parenthood: Child Care, Women’s Rights, and the Myth of the Good Mother (1993), which put forth the thesis that in order for women to work, men must take on a larger share of child care. Among her later books were The Pig Farmer’s Daughter and Other Tales of American Justice: Episodes of Racism and Sexism in the Courts from 1865 to the Present (1999), My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations (2005), And Justice for All: The United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Continuing Struggle for Freedom in America (2009), History Teaches Us to Resist: How Progressive Movements Have Succeeded in Challenging Times (2018), and Slavery After Slavery: Revealing the Legacy of Forced Child Apprenticeships on Black Families, from Emancipation to the Present (2024).