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Justice Carolyn Wright
Dallas Women Lawyers
Association Newsletter
Volume 11 of 1998 November 1998
By Suzanne M. Duvall
Recently, author D.J. Johnson interviewed various Dallas-area political
leaders in preparation for a book she was writing to inspire children to
aspire to leadership positions in government. Among the questions asked of
these leaders, who included Mayor Ron Kirk, Senator Kay Bailey-Hutchinson,
and Councilman Al Lipscomb, was “What is your favorite color?” Most
replied, “blue”. Not Justice Carolyn Wright; she replied, “black, white,
yellow, purple and mauve”.
Her reply personifies the person behind the robe. She simply cannot be
confined by artificial limits and one word is never enough to describe the
diversity of her interests and her life.
The first African-American woman in Texas history ever to win a multi-county
election for any office, Justice Wright is a fourth generation Texan.
Although she has deep family roots both in Texas and Mississippi, in a
sense, Carolyn Wright is a citizen of the world, having attended school in
such diverse places as Bryan, Texas; Washington, D.C.; Dover, Delaware; and
Tachikawa, Japan. She serves as one of thirteen justices of the Fifth
District Court of Appeals, the jurisdiction of which includes criminal,
civil, juvenile, probate and family matters. But, her years on the trial
bench were spent first as a family court master and then as the judge of the
256th District Court. She was nominated to serve on the Federal District
Court by Senator Phil Gramm. Although she and her husband, James Sanders,
have no children of their own, children are a primary focus of Justice
Wright’s life. As godmother to “lots of children” and as a former family
court judge and master, as well as having spent the early part of her career
designing alternative programs for youth and juvenile incarceration, Justice
Wright recognizes the critical role children play in our society. “They are
so very, very important in who we are and what this country will be, yet it
is as if we as adults never have enough time for them. We are so busy
making a living that we don’t have enough time to live and what’s worse, we
forget why we are living – we forget the children”, says Justice Wright. “I
always try to see the world through a child’s eyes – they have so many
questions and feel so vulnerable,” she adds.
At
the other end of life’s spectrum, Justice Wright feels a closeness to old
people who are also among society’s most vulnerable. “All of my life you
could find me at an old person’s house, listening to their stories and
learning from their wisdom. They always seemed to know so many things.
They were and still are, a resource for me.” This affinity to both young
and the old exemplifies perhaps the most unique quality Justice Wright
possesses: the ability to reach people in some unreachable place. “People
seem to tell me virtually anything without my prodding and without my
asking. I always try to give them back something. I can’t always give them
exactly what they want, but I try to be a resource for them just as I’ve
been fortunate to have resources in my life. I seem to have an ability to
let people know it’s okay, you can trust me. Often I don’t realize what a
kind word and taking a moment of my time can mean to a person. Yet, years
later, they will come up to me on the street and thank me for something I
might not even remember.”
As
the eldest daughter of two loving parents who expected her to achieve,
Justice Wright followed her father, a career Air Force Master Sergeant, to
bases throughout the United States and the Far East in her formative years.
“My father told me early on that I had three things I had to do: (1) eat
properly in order to be healthy; (2) get enough rest; and (3) study.
Anything else had to be ‘on my time’. ‘My time’ meant after I was
eighteen”. Her mother, whom Justice Wright describes as “extremely bright”
and who could have been a doctor had she not decided to support her
husband’s career and raise her children, made education fun. “Dad was
absolutely driven. He felt that life had to be better for us. Nothing
would stand in the way of that. He was very frightening to prospective
suitors. Mom had a different technique. She spent an extraordinary amount
of time with us (even using string and Popsicle sticks to teach me
geometry!) to give each one of her children a special gift to contribute to
society. I have two sisters, one a judge in Philadelphia, one a Harvard
Ph.D. in Education and one brother, a successful businessman in the
communications field.”
When she graduated from high school, Justice Wright’s father wanted her to
go to college and to law school. She had other ideas. “It was now ‘my
time’”, she says. She, therefore, asserted her independence and decided to
pursue an independent business school education, becoming a paralegal in
Washington, D.C. After several years as a paralegal, she then decided to
put herself through college and, ultimately, graduated from Howard
University School of Law. “Doing what I wanted to do was not easy”, she
says upon reflecting on her choices. Since graduation from law school, she
has not wavered from her choice of career field.
Along the road, Justice Wright has managed to garner a plethora of
professional, civic, and religious honors. She is a member of the National
Task Force of the State Justice Institute which sets national standards for
mediation practice. As an author and speaker for the Texas Center for the
Judiciary and the National Judicial College, Justice Wright received the
Yellow Rose of Texas Award for community service from Governor George Bush.
The women of her church, Hamilton Park United Methodist Church, established
a permanent endowment in her honor as the Carolyn-Wright Sanders Scholarship
Fund. These are but a few of her awards and recognitions.
Just as it is difficult for Carolyn Wright to limit herself to just one
favorite color, it is, likewise, difficult to characterize her by just one
of the many facets that make up her life. Yet, through everything she does
in her career, her religion and in her personal life, there is a strong
value system, personal integrity and a motivation for excellence that colors
everything she does and makes her the outstanding jurist and human being
that she is. |
