When lawyer and longtime public servant William A. McClain ’34 graduated from Wittenberg, he embarked on a journey of firsts. It was a journey that would lead him to break down numerous racial barriers in his more than 50-year legal career, and it was a journey that would eventually make him one of the most respected attorneys in the nation.

“When I started out, doors were closed,” he told the Cincinnati Post last year. “Now, at least, they’re ajar. But the lesson I learned is that race is only a circumstance, not a condition. Through talent and hard work and faith, you can accomplish anything. You set your own ceiling in life,” he added.

In 1942, just five years after his graduation from the University of Michigan Law School, McClain became Cincinnati’s first black assistant city solicitor, making him the first black lawyer to serve as law director of a major city. Eight years later, the former Springfield resident became the first black member of the Cincinnati Bar Association, and in 1972 he became the first black member of the downtown law firm Keating, Muething & Klekamp. He was also Hamilton County’s first black Common Pleas Court judge, the first black lawyer elected for membership in the Cincinnati Lawyers Club and the first black acting city manager from 1968-1972.

The oldest living black lawyer in Hamilton County and the oldest living black alumnus of the University of Michigan Law School, McClain was also the only black student at Wittenberg from 1930-1934 and the only black student in his law school class. He was also one of the best orators in Wittenberg’s history, winning the National Intercollegiate Oratorical Contest his senior year.

“As a young, 21-year-old black student, I realized that if I could win this contest on a national scale being the only black student in a white-dominated setting, I could do anything I wanted to do,” McClain said. “The struggle for a black man is to attain his selfhood, and that accomplishment at Wittenberg made me realize that my blackness was a badge of honor, not a badge of shame.”

Despite race-based obstacles, McClain, who majored in political science at Wittenberg, earned the respect of classmates and faculty, and he continues to be admired around the country for his personal and professional achievements. In 1997, he received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, which recognizes the achievements of outstanding ethnic Americans and their contributions to America. Four presidents, several congressman and Nobel Prize winners join McClain in receiving this prestigious award sanctioned by the United States Congress.

In April 2002, the University of Michigan conferred on him an honorary doctor of laws degree. Wittenberg also awarded McClain an honorary doctor of humane letters in 1972, and he received the university’s Alumni Citation for his exceptional professional accomplishments in 1966. In 1996, he returned to Wittenberg to present the keynote address at the university’s Opening Convocation.

Now retired, McClain, 90, can still be found working in the downtown law firm of Manley Burke at least five days a week and occasionally on the weekends. That commitment to his craft and his community caught the attention of the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, which honored McClain with its Great Living Cincinnatian Award on Feb. 26.

Surrounded by family, friends, colleagues, representatives from Wittenberg and the University of Michigan School of Law as well as fraternity brothers from Alpha Phi Alpha at Wittenberg and Sigma Pi Phi, the most prestigious fraternity for black men in the nation, McClain had more tables filled than anyone else receiving the award. “It was a great affair,” McClain said. “I’ve had a good life for a black man, and I’ve brought honor to Wittenberg.” 

—Karen Gerboth ’93