This summer, two undergraduate students worked together with one of the students hailing from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus. This was the first time a student from that university was brought to Vassar College to participate in the Ford Scholars program.

We completed a wide variety of activities throughout the summer with the ultimate goal of understanding black Americans feelings towards and perceptions of black judges in state courts. In the initial weeks, we read extensively on judicial representation, gathered bibliography, and assisted in creating surveys and interviews. Next, we interviewed and surveyed black Americans at the Poughkeepsie Galleria Mall, in downtown Poughkeepsie in front the courthouse, and at Union Square Park in Manhattan.

Towards the end of the summer, we gathered the qualitative and quantitative data we had collected. We transcribed the interviews, collected data from the surveys, and collected data from the content analysis performed on over seventy cases of black judges’ television show episodes to analyze how black judges portray themselves on these programs. We exported and analyzed the qualitative data into a software called NVivo.

The research done this summer will be used by Assistant Professor of Political Science, Taneisha Means, in a chapter of her manuscript, Representing the Race: Black Judges and Justice in State Courts.