Pretty Powerful by Eboni K. Williams

Author:Eboni K. Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Appearance, Substance, and Success
Publisher: Viva Editions
Published: 2017-08-07T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

TRIAL BY FIRE

With Insight from Marcia Clark

“Some of this is biological . . . women are the standard bearers of beauty, so to speak. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to rise above it though.”

— MARCIA CLARK

“The Trial of the Century” stuck out like a sore thumb to me. I had such a preliminary interest in this juxtaposition and intersection of law and media, and that’s probably why I chose the career path I’m currently on. I shared with Marcia Clark that after school I would watch every moment of the trial at the hair salon my mother owned at the time, to which Clark replied without skipping a beat, “She could have helped me then.” This woman is kind of amazing!

The first thing I needed to do when I spoke to Marcia Clark for the first time was express gratitude. Acknowledging her as the first female attorney I ever saw in a courtroom (who wasn’t on a TV show or in a movie) was an important part of my ability to see myself trying cases one day. Representation is important. As Clark says, “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.” For some people they find examples of their aspirations within their own homes and families. That’s a huge blessing. For some of us, we have to find those examples in the greater community or the media. Seeing Clark in that courtroom was powerful because she wasn’t just in the room, she was a leader in the room. She was crashing the boy’s club party.

Becoming a lawyer was a super long-shot dream of mine. I do not come from a family of college educated people. Seeing Clark—a woman—practicing law in a courtroom was pretty huge for me. It changed me. I am from the South, and growing up I did not see women in the role of a lawyer.

Clark shares that it always makes her so happy to hear that seeing that awful debacle was actually inspiring in a good way, and that something good came of it. That “debacle,” of course, was the 1994 O. J. Simpson (former National Football League star and actor) murder case and criminal trial held at the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Simpson was tried (and acquitted) on two counts of murder for the deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. The trial lasted just under a year, and the case has been described as the most publicized criminal trial in American history.

It was very powerful for many of us. Many women are out-graduating men in law school or are at least on track with them. That was not always the case. I do think women like Clark are very much responsible for that shift in trend. I thank Clark for that.

Clark was the only woman in a special prosecution unit in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office called the “Special Trials Unit.” Clark recalls, “There were instances of sexism. Not necessarily the men who were in the unit with me but in management.

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