In celebration of Women’s History Month, Fordham Law is honoring trailblazing graduates who broke barriers and changed the legal profession.
Eunice Carter ’32 was the first Black woman assistant district attorney in the state of New York and part of the team that convicted Lucky Luciano, one of New York’s most notorious mobsters. She was also chief of the Special Sessions Bureau for the New York County criminal justice system, chair of the United Nations’ International Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations, and member of the U.S. National Committee for the U.N. Economic and Social Council. Fordham Law’s annual Eunice Carter Lecture, launched in 2022, honors Carter and her work. Learn more about this pathbreaking Fordham Law alumna below.
Raised in a society that had constrained expectations about race and gender, Eunice Carter triumphed far beyond the stifling conventions of her day. By the 1940s, her professional and political successes had made her one of the most famous Black women in the United States.
Carter, the granddaughter of slaves, graduated from Fordham Law’s evening program in 1932, while working full-time as a supervisor in the Harlem division of the Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee.
In 1935, she became the first Black woman assistant district attorney in the state of New York. Working with special prosecutor Thomas Dewey’s famed “Twenty Against the Underworld”—a team of 20 lawyers Dewey selected to help him fight organized crime in New York City—Carter was instrumental in securing the conviction of Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the most powerful mobster in the country. She was the only member of the team who was not a white male.
In 1937, Carter was appointed chief of the Special Sessions Bureau of the New York County criminal justice system. She would go on to an illustrious career in international service, which included her attendance at the founding session of the United Nations in 1945. In 1955, she was elected chair of the United Nations’ International Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations.
She is the subject of the critically acclaimed book Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster, written by her grandson, law professor Stephen L. Carter.