Gabrielle Kirk McDonald

Gabrielle Kirk McDonald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1942. Her father fought in World War II and then worked as a railroad dining car waiter. The family lived in a small apartment above a mortuary but did not stay there long. Her parents divorced when McDonald was four, and she and her mother moved to Washington, D.C. They took up residence in an apartment in a poor neighborhood, where McDonald was usually left with sitters while her mother worked.

Before long, McDonald's mother's dreams of becoming an actress lured her to New York. The two of them lived in Harlem while McDonald's mother worked as a secretary for newspapers and magazines, and at one point she worked for the United Nations. She was often the understudy for off-Broadway plays.

"My mother was the center of my life," says McDonald. "We were alone for a long time, and she influenced me in many ways. She was half-white, and her skin color, unlike mine, was light enough that she could have passed for white, but she never chose that path. Instead, she spoke out against racial injustices. She was a fireball, and I admired her tenacity, her sense of being a survivor."

McDonald's mother had always wanted a college education but was never able to afford it for herself. She often took classes at night and told her daughter that education was something that could never be taken away. When McDonald was eight, she and her mother moved to a high-rise apartment in predominantly white Riverdale, New York. But there, McDonald endured racial slurs and often felt rejected and inferior. Finally, she ran away with a girlfriend, but she was found by a policeman and returned to her mother, who then sent her back to St. Paul to spend time with her grandparents.

In St. Paul, McDonald attended an all-black Catholic school and enjoyed her grandparents' all-black neighborhood. "I stayed there for over a year and had a solid group of friends," she says. "When my mother remarried, I returned to New York. My brother also came to live with us. It was a big adjustment for me. We lived in a very bad neighborhood where I saw people selling drugs regularly. My school was a tough place, much like the blackboard jungle. I remember once coming out for a fire drill and seeing a chalk outline of a dead person. Crime was all around us, and everyone seemed to accept that. It was a scary time for me, and more than once I ran all the way home."

When she was in high school, the family moved to Teaneck, New Jersey. Tall and athletic, McDonald played field hockey and was president of the girls' leadership club. Her yearbook states that she was one of the "nicest" and "most liked girls" in her class.

McDonald attended Boston University, where she worked in the school kitchen. She joined an all-black sorority and was president of her pledge class. In the summer, she worked with a telephone company in New York. After three semesters, she transferred to Hunter College, where tuition was cheaper than in Boston, but the classes were more demanding. McDonald worked hard toward her history major and was admitted to the honor society.

When McDonald attended a conference at Washington's Howard University marking the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, she was immediately inspired to join the civil rights movement, and enrolled at Howard's law school, working as a research assistant in addition to studying. In her second year, the Ford Foundation awarded her a scholarship. McDonald went on to become secretary of the student bar association and associate editor of the law journal. She graduated cum laude and first in her class.

McDonald began her career as a civil rights lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in New York. In 1969, she set up in practice in Houston with her then-husband, Mark McDonald, specializing in job discrimination cases against major companies and labor unions.

In 1979, at the age of 37, President Jimmy Carter named her a federal district judge for the Southern District of Texas. She was the first African American to be appointed to the federal bench in Texas and only the third black woman to be appointed as a federal district judge in U.S. history. During her tenure, which lasted until 1988, McDonald oversaw many high-profile cases, including one in which she ruled against the Ku Klux Klan despite death threats against her.

In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly chose her as 1 of 11 judges to sit on the newly created International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. She went on to become the tribunal's president from 1993 to 1997. Later, she served as special counsel for human rights to the chairman of the board of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, Inc. She also became a judge with the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, which was set up to resolve claims resulting from the hostage crisis.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said of McDonald, "She was one of the pioneer civil rights litigators in our country. She went on to become a pioneer justice for international war crimes law."

Those words touched McDonald deeply. "We're here for a reason. We have to do something for each other and ourselves," she says. "I think success is about making a contribution, making a difference."