Read the Oral History of Professor Patricia King

To use “public interest law in furtherance of social justice ideas” – that is how Patricia King described her calling and her career in a sweeping oral history she gave as part of the ABA’s Women Trailblazers Project. King has pursued her vision of social justice – particularly with respect to racial and gender equity – from her path-setting days at Harvard Law School; to her role in civil rights struggles (along with her late husband, Roger Wilkins); to her important high-level positions at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and the Justice Department; to her public testimony against a Supreme Court nominee; and, finally and currently, to her academic work at Georgetown Law School, where she became that institution’s first tenured African American professor.