我记得她 作为一个安静的同学. But Barbara Ann Rowan’s accomplishments spoke volumes: She mastered multiple languages, became the first Black woman assistant U.S. attorney (AUSA) in the Southern District of New York, and founded an investigative consulting firm whose reputation in an ethically challenged field was one of enormous integrity. Rowan died last October in Arlington, Va. The cause, said her husband of 48 years, Harold W. 戈塞特二世是COVID-19.
After leaving Barnard with a bachelor’s in Spanish, Rowan began a master’s program at NYU in Brazilian area studies, passing the Department of State (DOS) exam and hoping for a career in diplomacy. 但根据丽莎·佐恩伯格的说法, an eminent trial lawyer who interviewed Rowan in the summer of 2020, DOS面试官直截了当地说, “你知道我们不雇佣女性,” so Rowan left the master’s program and enrolled in the School of Law, studying at night and working full-time during the day as the foreign trademark coordinator for Richardson-Merrell, 公司.; her father had died, and she’d become the income earner for her mother and grandmother.
有法律学位, Rowan spent a brief time with South Bronx Legal 服务 before she and an NYU classmate opened a two-person shop in Greenwich Village handling whatever cases came their way. She eventually argued a case opposing NYU’s midterm eviction of husband and wife professors from a university-owned building that so impressed the presiding judge he recommended her to the U.S. 检察官办公室. 作为辩护律师, she’d found that her sympathy was often with the victims, and she was happy to be on the other side. Her 1971 appointment made the front page of the 纽约阿姆斯特丹新闻. As the first Black woman and only the third woman AUSA in the criminal division, she did her work and did it well in that office of mostly white men, helping to break ground for other women. It was during that time that she met her future husband, an FBI agent.
罗文是“一个伟大的人”, 伟大的出庭律师, as natural as anybody who ever worked in a courtroom,佐恩伯格写道, 他还引用了约翰·西弗特的话, an AUSA who interned for Rowan in 1971: “I learned so much from her. She was fabulous, and she taught me that smart people could have fun practicing law.”
Rowan left the Southern District in 1974, 几年后, she and her husband joined the staff of the House Ethics Committee’s “Koreagate” investigation, after which she served as an assistant director of the Federal Trade Commission. In 1980, she founded an investigative consulting firm, 罗文的同事, which her husband joined after leaving the FBI. They successfully collaborated for 35 years.
搬到弗吉尼亚后, Rowan was attending an Alexandria Bar Association event in 1982 when a speaker used a racial slur. She was the only Black attorney present and the only person seated for the speaker’s standing ovation. 后来, she sparked a group protest letter to the bar, 公开道歉, and the formation of the Northern Virginia Black Attorneys Association. 到一个 华盛顿邮报》 reporter, she said, “It was not a pleasant welcome to the Alexandria Bar. My goodness, I thought I’d stepped into the last century.”
Barbara Rowan made sure her voice was heard.
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