Another Little-Known Fact: Ralph Metcalfe Was a Marquette Law Student (at Least for a While)

Ralph Metcalfe (1910-1978) is one of the best-known of all of Marquette University’s African-American alumni.  A member of the undergraduate class of 1936, Metcalfe achieved great prominence as an athlete at Marquette and as an educator and a public servant in his subsequent life.

In the 1930’s, Metcalfe and Jesse Owens computed neck and neck for the unofficial title of the greatest sprinter of the decade.  Metcalfe won a total of four Olympic medals in 1932 and 1936, and while at Marquette, he equaled the world record for the 100-yard dash and set or tied NCAA records in both the 100-yard and 220-yard dashes.  (His time in the 220-yard straightaway is still the official NCAA record and one that is likely to last since the event is no longer run.)  Although the younger Owens bested Metcalfe in the 100-meter dash at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Owens never matched Metcalfe’s best times as a collegiate runner.  In 1975, he was a member of the second class inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame.

After Marquette, Metcalfe  went on to a successful career as track coach and instructor in political science at Xavier University in New Orleans. (He also picked up an M.A. degree in Political Science from the University of Southern California.)  After service in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, the Georgia native returned to Chicago, where he had lived prior to enrolling at Marquette.

In Chicago, he achieved additional success as a businessman and politician.  A Democrat, he served four terms as a Chicago city alderman, and in 1971 was elected to the United States Congress, in which he served until his death in 1977.  As a Congressman, he was one of the founders of Congressional Black Caucus.

What is not so well known is that Metcalfe was also a Marquette law student from 1934 to 1935.  The primary reason that this is not better remembered is that Metcalfe’s stint as a law student was relatively brief and that he transferred back to the undergraduate college during his final year at Marquette.

Metcalfe enrolled at Marquette during the 1931-1932 academic year and competed in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games as a Marquette student.  In 1934, he transferred to the Law School without having yet earned an undergraduate degree.  There was, however, nothing unusual about such a course of action in 1934, since two years of college work had been a prerequisite for enrolling at the Law School since the early 1920’s.  However, in 1934, the Law School announced that all students who enrolled after  January 1, 1935, would have to present three years of undergraduate work.  (Technically, this remains the requirement today.)

Whether or not Metcalfe had earned three years of college credit before the fall of 1934 is not clear, but at that point the requirement was still just two years, which he had clearly completed.

Although Metcalfe was an excellent student — he was elected a member of Alpha Sigma Nu, the Jesuit Honor Society — and when he received the Ph.B. degree in 1936, it was awarded cum laude — he apparently found his studies at the law school quite challenging.  In Jeremy Schaap’s recent book on Jesse Owens, he reports that Metcalfe pulled out of a much anticipated race with Owens in the spring of 1935 (in Milwaukee of all places) because he had to study for his Law School exams.

However, by the following fall, Metcalfe had apparently decided not to pursue a career in law after all.  The October 10, 1935, Chicago Tribune reported that he had transferred from the Law School back to Marquette’s undergraduate college, and it was the undergraduate college that awarded him his degree in the spring of 1936.  Apparently, the fact of his transfer was not everywhere noted;  for example, a February 9, 1936, story on Metcalfe in the New York Times described him “as a law student at Marquette.”

Today, Metcalfe is best remembered at Marquette through the periodic exhibits pertaining to his career that are staged by the University Archives and by the attachment of his name to the university’s outstanding athlete award, to two prestigious undergraduate scholarships, and to the university’s Ralph Metcalfe Chair, which is used to bring noted African-American scholars to the Marquette community.

However, we can also add his name to the list of remarkable individuals who passed through the Marquette Law School during the 1920’s, 1930’s, and 1940’s, but who made their mark outside of the legal profession, a list that includes the likes of NFL players Lavern Dilweg, Biff Toucher, and Dan McGinnis; actor-athlete-singer Paul Robeson,;actor Pat O’Brien (who played Knute Rockne in The Knute Rockne Story); circus giant and actor Clifford Thompson; and controversial politician and hipster Joe McCarthy.

The picture below depicts Metcalfe (L) and sprinter Eddie Tolan at the 1932 Olympics.

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Boden Visitor A Reminder of Marquette’s Connection to Charles Evans Hughes

This year’s Boden Lecturer, Prof. Thomas Merrill, is the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at the Columbia University Law School.   In addition to providing insight in the fascinating Wisconsin case of Melms v. Pabst, his presence also reminds us of an important connection between the Marquette Law Review and Charles Evans Hughes.

Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948) was one of the great luminaries of American Law.  He is the only individual to have served two separate stints on the Supreme Court (1911-1916 and 1930-1941, the latter as Chief Justice).  He also served as Secretary of State in the Harding and Coolidge administrations, and he and William Howard Taft are the only two men in American history to have both served on the Supreme Court and have been a major party nominee for president of the United States.  However, unlike Taft, who was elected president  in 1908, Hughes lost the presidential election of 1916 to incumbent Woodrow Wilson, although in terms of electoral votes, it was one of the closest elections in American History.  (Wilson won by an electoral vote margin of 277-254.  Had less than 2,000 Californians switched their votes from Wilson to Hughes, Hughes would have become the 29th president of the United States.)

Hughes’ connection to Marquette came shortly after the 1916 election.  Although Woodrow Wilson ran for re-election with the slogan “He kept us out of war”[World War I], barely a month after the beginning of his second term, the U.S. declared war against Germany and the other Axis powers.  The declaration of war led to a mobilization of the American economy under the direction of the national government that was without precedent in American history, and at least some observers questioned the constitutionality of the actions of the Wilson Administration and Congress.

By the summer of 1917, Hughes had returned to the private practice of law in New York City, but he quickly came to the defense of the policies of his former rival.  In an address entitled “War Powers under the Constitution,” delivered to the American Bar Association at its annual meeting on September 5, 1917, Hughes endorsed the broad interpretation of presidential power embraced by President Wilson.  The address was widely hailed by those who supported the American war effort and thousands of copies of the address were distributed to newspapers and other groups by the ABA.

The address was also published as the lead article in Volume 2, Issue 1 of the Marquette Law Review, which appeared only a few months after the address was first delivered. The law review had been founded only the year before, and the journal received a major boost in credibility and visibility with the presence of Hughes already famous address in what was only its third issue.

As the Law Review itself noted at the opening of the issue, “The Marquette Law Review starts its second year as a legal publication with a great deal more confidence than it did the previous year.”  Being able to attract contributors of the stature of Charles Evans Hughes was indeed a reason to feel confident.

How it was that the Marquette Law Review acquired the rights to be the only law review to publish Hughes’ address is not clear.  The Review itself revealed no such information, although in an editorial it did thank Hughes for granting it permission to publish the address.  None of Hughes’ biographers make any reference to a Marquette connection; however, one is tempted to speculate that the connection came through faculty member Carl Rix, who was the law review’s faculty adviser in 1917, and who was an active member (and a future president) of the American Bar Association.

While Rix may be the connection, he did not attend the 1917 ABA meeting which was held in Saratoga Springs, New York.  In fact, that year only two lawyers from Milwaukee, Edward Fairchild and W. A. Hayes, attended the annual meeting , and neither had any connection to the Marquette Law School.

It may simply have been that some enterprising member of the law review staff came up with the idea of contacting Hughes and offering to publish his address.

In any event, its publication brought the law review a great deal of attention, and forever established a linkage between Marquette and Charles Evans Hughes.

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The Dedication of Sensenbrenner Hall

Today is the 86th anniversary of the dedication of the former Marquette law building now known as Sensenbrenner Hall.  On Wednesday, August 27, 1924, a formal ceremony was held to mark the completion of the new law school building, known then only as the Law Building, shortly before the start of the 1924-25 academic year.

The new building, constructed just in front of the previous law school building, the Mackie Mansion, had been two years in the making.  Its completion helped symbolize the arrival of Marquette into the first rank of American law schools.   As the university proclaimed, “The School of Law of Marquette University has entered upon a new era.”

According to the Associated Press, the event was attended by “a great crowd of former students, current students, lawyers, judges, and state officials.” The ceremony began at 10:30 a.m. with an invocation by the Rev. Hugh McMahon, S.J., the regent of the law school.  After that, the keys to the law school were ceremonially presented to Dean Max Schoetz by the university’s president, the Rev. Albert C. Fox, S.J.  Fox lauded the accomplishments of the law school over the previous 30 years (indicating that he dated the law school’s beginnings to the Milwaukee Law School) and asked Schoetz to teach future students “that it is the law which has made us free and that there is no freedom deserving the name, save under the law.”

After remarks by Schoetz, who chaired the program, the dedicatory address was delivered by Justice Burr W. Jones of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.  His address was followed by remarks by William D. Thompson, the president of the Wisconsin Bar Association.  Other speakers at the occasion included Milwaukee mayor Cornelius Corcoran, Milwaukee Circuit Judge Edward T. Fairchild (himself later a member of the state supreme court), and former students George Burns L’14 and Joseph Witmer L’24.  Speaking on behalf of the students of the Milwaukee Law Class which had preceded the Milwaukee/Marquette Law School was Milwaukee lawyer A.K. Stebbins L’08 (hon.).

The current law students used the occasion to announce the presentation of a set of Canadian Reports to the school’s library.

Medals containing an image of former Marquette president Joseph Grimmelsman on one side and an engraving of the new law building on the other were distributed to guests and students.  Several of these medals are now in the possession of the Marquette University archives.

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