Law / Civil rights & activism
Anna Diggs Taylor
1932–2017 · federal judge, civil rights lawyer
Yale-trained lawyer who built her career in Detroit and in 1979 became Michigan's first Black woman federal judge; in 2006 she struck down the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program.
- Born
Washington, D.C.- Died
Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan
aged 84- Birth name
- Anna Katherine Johnston
- Detroit years
- 1961–2017
- Field
- Law, Civil rights & activism
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Anna Katherine Johnston grew up in Washington, D.C., graduated from Barnard College and Yale Law School and worked as a Labor Department attorney before moving to Detroit. She was an assistant Wayne County prosecutor in 1961–1962 and an assistant U.S. attorney in 1966, and in 1964 she volunteered as a civil rights lawyer in Mississippi. Married to Congressman Charles Diggs, she managed his Detroit office from 1967 to 1970, then practiced law in the city, taught at Wayne State and served as a supervising assistant corporation counsel in the Detroit Law Department. President Carter appointed her to the federal bench for the Eastern District of Michigan in 1979, making her the first African American woman federal judge in the state; she was chief judge from 1996 to 1998. In ACLU v. NSA (2006) she was the first federal judge to rule on the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance, finding it unconstitutional, though an appeals court later vacated the ruling on standing grounds. She died in Grosse Pointe Woods in 2017.
Highlights
- First African American woman federal judge in Michigan (1979)
- Chief Judge of the Eastern District of Michigan, 1996–1998
- Ruled NSA warrantless wiretapping unconstitutional in ACLU v. NSA (2006)
- Supervising assistant corporation counsel for the City of Detroit, 1975–1979
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · 1979–2017
Theodore Levin United States Courthouse
Detroit's federal courthouse, seat of the Eastern District of Michigan, where she presided.