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CBA RECORD
31
Running from the Police
Holmes was born in San Diego, California,
and moved to Chicago at a young age. She
grew up the oldest of five children in a five-
bedroom house in the south side Morgan
Park neighborhood. Just at the end of her
block was Calumet City, Illinois. When
they moved in, her family was the first
African American family on the block—a
fact that triggered some violent reactions
in some of her neighbors. “I can tell you
stories,” Judge Holmes says, “[but] I won’t
tell you.”
Eventually, the neighborhood, as she
describes it “turned over,” and filled with
children playing softball in the street.
“Our big kick,” Holmes says, “was at 10
o’clock at night, we would go to the end of
the block and cross the street because the
curfew in Calumet City was 10 o’clock,
but the curfew in Chicago was 10:30. So
we would cross the street, and the Calumet
City police would come and turn on the
lights and we’d run back across the street.
And we literally would do that, you know,
for a half an hour.”
She later learned that the officer who
chased her and her siblings across the
street was the husband of Holmes’ sixth
grade teacher. “He was having just as
much fun as we were.” Even so, when her
mother found out about Holmes’ nightly
shenanigans, the game quickly ended.
Holmes describes her mother as an activist
and a rabble-rouser–a title which Holmes
also proudly claims. Holmes’ mother had
graduated from high school at 16 years old
and went straight to college. She became a
buyer for Sears & Robuck, located in the
now-named Willis Tower, where Holmes’
current office is.
The Education of a Rabble-Rouser
Holmes graduated valedictorian from
Edward H. White elementary school.
Her mother fought hard to get her into
the then-new George Henry Corliss High
School. In her freshman year of high
school, Holmes sat front and center in
her advanced placement English class.
The teacher took one look at her and
asked, “Why are you sitting in the front
of my class? You’re too black, too dumb
to be in front of my class. Get up and go
back.” Holmes, as she describes her skin
color, is “chocolate.” Because it was the
only advanced placement English section
offered, Holmes couldn’t switch out of
the class. “Which meant that me and the
teacher were going at it over every comma,”
Holmes recalled, “every period, every
noun. But it made me a better writer. Not
that that’s the way you go about it.”
Judge Holmes graduated co-Valedic-
torian from Corliss High School, tied in
almost every respect with another student.
Holmes recalls arguing with the school
about whether she should have to share
the title at all, noting that she had a perfect
attendance record while her so-called co-
valedictorian did not. “I think that was my
first legal argument,” she quips.
For college, though she was accepted or
waitlisted at Stanford, Harvard, and other
top schools, Holmes chose the University
of Illinois because it was the least expensive
and close to home. She started off in engi-
neering, but later switched to the liberal
arts. “I was the only minority, only African
American, only female [in Engineering]. I
couldn’t get anybody to study with me. I
was lonely…so I switched out.”
On campus, Holmes came into her role
as a rabble-rouser like her mother, never let-
ting injustice pass by unchecked. “I had to
learn how to stick up for myself,” she says.
During her freshman year rhetoric class,
Holmes was “the only black person in the
class, the only visible minority.” One story
from that class has stayed with her. Papers
in the class were graded anonymously, with
only social security numbers identifying
the students. When handing back graded
papers in class, Holmes’ professor slid her a
paper without reading off any of the iden-
tifying numbers. Holmes remembers the
moment clear as day. “How did she know
this was my paper?” She thought, “She
must know my social security number…
Then I looked at the paper and it said ‘F’
… I’ve never failed anything in my life.”
The paper wasn’t hers. Holmes had actually
received an A+, and the professor had even
written on Holmes’ paper
Use as example
.
Before giving Holmes her actual paper, the
professor asked her, “Who helped you with
this?” Holmes promptly switched out of that
section. “Dealing with situations like that…
always made me the person who says ‘That’s
not right. That’s not fair. We’re standing up.’”
Her college friends dared Holmes to
take the LSAT. Though she didn’t study
At the CBA’s Annual Meeting, shortly after receiving the gavel of leadership fromDaniel
A. Cotter of Butler Rubin (right), with CBA Executive Director Terrence M. Murphy.