Biography
Biography
Charles E. Walker, Jr., Esq.
Except for serving four years on the full-time faculty of a local law school, and 4 years as a private practitioner, Charles E. Walker, Jr., Esq. has devoted his entire professional career as a Government Attorney for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as an Educator, and as an advocate for Civil Rights, and Social Justice.
Mr. Walker is a recently retired attorney after serving 25 years as an Assistant Attorney General General Counsel, to Secretary of Elder Affairs, and later the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Division of Professional Licensure Director
He was also appointed and re-appointed by three different Governors for consecutive terms as a Commissioner and Chairman of the Massacchussets Commission Against Discrimination and later as a Workers Compensation Judge, with the Division of Industrial Accidents (DIA).
He has served on the Full-time, and Adjunct faculties at 5 Boston and New England based Law Schools, and Graduate Schools including: New England/ Boston School of Law, Boston College Law School, Northeastern School of Law, Suffolk Law School, and the University of Massachusetts School of Law, and Tufts University. He has also lectured Harvard Law School (Prof Elizabeth Bartholet), as well as and University of District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law.(Prof. John Brittain.
He is the Former Executive Director of the Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights under Law of the Boston Bar Association.
And has served as a tustee and /or as a member of the Boards of Directors on the Boards of Directors of both the Massachussets Bar Assoication (MBA), the And Boston Bar Association (BBA), Boston Center Adult Education, Museum of African American History, The Metropolitan Council For Educational Opportunity (METCO), and the Massachussets Law Reform Institute.
Between 1977-1978 as a 2L law student Mr. Walker initiated the creation of Boston College Law School’s Third World Law Journal (1978- 2011) which, in 2011 was merged the Law School’s Journal of Law and Social Justice.
For nine years Mr. Walker served as a Mock Trial Judge, Criminal Trial Advisor, on the volunteer faculty of Prof Charles J. Ogletree’s Trial Advocacy Workshop at Harvard Law School.
He is a former Fellow of the American Bar Asssociation’s College of Labor and Employment Lawyers (2007-2009),
And Chairman of the Board of Directors of the state’s first Black-owned and organized Public Defender Service, the Roxbury Defenders Committee; President of the Massuchussets Black Lawyers Associartion (MBLA), and President and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Council For Educational Opportunity (METCO), which since 1966 has been the 2d oldest and most venerable voluntary school desegregation program in the country.
In 2018 U Mass Dartmouth School of Law voted him as the “Adjunct Professor of the Year”
He presently serves on the Board of Trustees for the Mass Law Reform Institute (MLRI)MASS LAW REFORM INSTITUTE (MLRI) and recently installed as a member of the HON. Harry Justin Elam Black Judicial Conference.
He received his JD from Boston College Law School and his BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara. With Magna Cum Laude Honors.
He’s been an actor and singer in plays and musicals Wheelock College Family Theatre and is an avid, Black legal history buff.
He’s an amateur graphic artist creating mixed media collages , an avid photographer, illustrator and political cartoonist. His is a Deacon at the New Bethel Church of God-in-Christ in Washington, DC.
Professor Walker presently is a Title VII, Investigator, Mediator and Arbitrator, and serves at varias times as an Adjunct Law Professor in Massachusetts, and Washington, DC.
He resides in Takoma Park, MD. with his lovely wife, Howard University Professor Tricia Elam Walker.
P R O L O G U E
In retirement, Attorney Walker’s current and greatest endeavor is to resurrect the legend and legacy of Attorney Robert Morris, the nation’s second Black Lawyer admitted to practice in the United States who, with Charles Sumner, in 1847 argued the nation’s first school desegregation case (96 years before racial segregation was sanctioned by SCOTUS in Plessy vs Ferguson). Morris too, in another case, where he represented Shadrach Minkins, a Fugitive Slave from Va., was arrested indicted and charged for Treason for his role in facilitating Minkin’s escape. His acquittal led to the country’s repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law of (1850). There has yet to be a state monument, much less a school, or street named in his honor.