Page 24 - NC Triangle Vol 6 No 5

CANDIDATE PROFILE
In Pursuit of
Equal Justice
WRITTEN BY BOB FRIEDMAN
St.Louis, Missouri, is a long way from Seattle, Washington, where Anita Earls was born and raised. But it’s where her parents, Garnett and Hazel, a mixed- race couple, had to move to get legally married because such marriages were illegal in Missouri. “My father was black; my mother was white. I identify as an African-American woman. My racial and gender identities are a fact of my birth that I’ve been aware of as long as I can remem- ber,” said Anita Earls, the Democratic candidate for the seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court currently held by Justice Barbara Jackson. “I saw the challenges my family faced but also how the guarantee of equal justice under law could remove those barriers,” said Earls. “From an early age, I wanted to be a lawyer to work for fairness and equal justice. I was the first one in my family to graduate from college and incred-
ibly fortunate to be able to go to law school.” Earls’ father had attended a two-year college in Missouri because at the time there were no four-year colleges in the state that would accept African-Americans. He became a medical tech-
nician. Her mother was a registered nurse. Anita attended Williams College in William- stown, Massachusetts, where she was a double major in political economy and philosophy. She
earned her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School. “While a lot of my Yale classmates landed at Wall Street law firms, my guiding principle was to be a lawyer who represents people who other-
wise would not have a voice or representation.”
ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · NORTH CAROLINA TRIANGLE. 6 NO. 5 24
ANITA EARLS