During an interview Saturday with the Los Alamos Daily Post, Albuquerque Attorney Roberta Cooper Ramo recounted her chance encounter with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 in Chicago. Courtesy/Modrall Sperling
By CAROL A. CLARK
Los Alamos Daily Post
caclark@ladailypost.com
The year was 1966 and Roberta Cooper (Ramo) had completed her second year at the University of Chicago Law School. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was speaking in a tenement on the south side of Chicago to the city’s poor – explaining that the law would take care of their problems if they learned how to use it.
“The reason I was there was that the old Mayor Daley was a terrible racist. Martin Luther King understood how important voting was in a profound way,” Ramo said. “So he brought young men up from Atlanta to help get young people in Chicago to vote. Many of these young men wore overalls … they were educated and not farmers … the overalls made them more visible in the community.”
Five of these young men were arrested, Ramo said, and she was sent from the Civil Liberties Union to secure their release from jail. (She laughed recalling how as a young student she had to borrow $5 from the men to travel to court to plead their case – adding that she made sure to pay them back.)
Ramo described that fateful day she went to visit with her clients in that south side tenement.
“I elbowed my way up to their 3rd floor apartment and heard that voice … the one that all of us would recognize,” Ramo said. “Martin Luther King was sitting in the kitchen. I somehow skooched my way around and for an hour watched. The thing that I would never have known had I not been in that apartment was that Dr. King was as brilliant a listener as he was a speaker.”
She said he listened in a way that one almost can’t imagine to what these people were telling him about their lives. About what Mayor Daley did to them. About not having anybody to talk to, go to, that even though many of them had registered to vote, there was a political machine that they had no ability to influence at all.
Ramo recalled how Dr. King listened to those young people pour out their hearts and when they finished, he said, “You have to understand. We’re Americans, and the Constitution is on our side, and lawyers are going to help us.”
He was right about all three of those things, Ramo said, they were Americans, the Constitution as interpreted by the Warren Court was on their side, and lawyers were there to help them.
“In that situation, I saw how really miraculous lawyers could be in really difficult times,” she said. “Kids who didn’t much believe in anything believed in the United States Supreme Court and in the power of lawyers to solve problems, and I do, too. That was part of what made me fall in love with the law.”
Ramo said today she worries about the Democracy.
“On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day I would encourage everyone to read the Preamble to the United States Constitution, that talks to the responsibility of every citizen…,” Ramo said. “Dr. King’s famous saying that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’ … that doesn’t just happen and I think it’s on all of us to be sure it bends in that direction.”
Since her encounter as a young law student with Dr. King in 1966, Ramo has spent her life working in defense of justice. She is a shareholder and attorney at Modrall Sperling in Albuquerque. In 1995 Ramo became the first woman in history elected president of the American Bar Association (ABA) and in 2008 the first woman elected president of the America Law Institute, the only person to have led both organizations.
She served on the Board of Regents for the University of New Mexico from 1989 to 1995 and also on the New Mexico Board of Finance. Ramo was named an honorary member of the Bar of England and Wales and of Gray’s Inn in 2000. She was appointed by the United States Senate and served as co-chair of a committee to review governance issues of the U.S. Olympic Committee in 2003.
In 2011, Ramo was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, adding her name to a prestigious list of members including George Washington and Albert Einstein, among other notables.
In August 2015, Ramo received the ABA’s highest award, the ABA Medal, at the General Assembly of the ABA’s Annual Meeting in Chicago. ABA President William C. Hubbard said of Ramo, “She is truly a Renaissance woman,” who has left her mark on “not only the ABA, but the entire legal profession and indeed our nation and our world” during the award presentation. “Throughout her career, she has distinguished herself on every issue on which she focused: domestic violence, judicial independence, gender equity, public understanding of the law, and the advancement of fair and equitable legal systems across the globe, and countless others.”
A Fellow of both the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and the American Bar Foundation, Ramo has served as a panel member for the American Arbitration Association. She serves on the Board of Think New Mexico, a non-partisan think tank and is Immediate Past Chair of Albuquerque Economic Development.
Ramo also serves on the Board of the Santa Fe Opera. Enterprise Bank & Trust Regional President Liddie Martinez serves on the opera board and spoke of the esteem she holds for Ramo.
“Roberta has been a friend and a mentor to me. It has been a privilege to serve as a board member by her side,” Martinez said. “She is a brilliant and capable leader and a great deal of fun as a travel companion. Our state is very fortunate to have benefited from her many talents.”
Ramo’s education includes University of Chicago School of Law, J.D., 1967 and University of Colorado, B.A., 1964, magna cum laude. Her Bar Admissions include New Mexico and Texas.
“I feel so lucky to have grown up in Albuquerque,” Ramo said, “where we don’t tolerate people who are different – we celebrate them!”
Ramo resides in Albuquerque with her husband Dr. Barry Ramo.