The Maryland Supreme Court posthumously admitted Edward Garrison Draper to the Maryland bar Thursday (Oct. 26), 166 years after he was rejected because of his race, The Associated Press reports.

In 1857, Draper, born a free Black man in Baltimore, graduated from Dartmouth University and presented himself as a candidate to Judge Z. Collins Lee for evaluation.

The judge was impressed that Draper was “most intelligent and well-informed,” but unqualified to join the state bar because he wasn’t “a free white Citizen of this State,” according to the petition for posthumous bar admission.

Interestingly, Judge Lee was an enslaver and Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s first cousin, The Washington Post reports.

Draper was better educated than most White lawyers in Maryland, where fewer than half the attorneys held a college degree. In that era, bar candidates obtained legal training through apprenticeships with established lawyers or judges. But Draper’s education and legal training didn’t matter.

The court held a special session to make amends.

“Maryland was not at the forefront of welcoming Black applicants to the legal profession. But by granting posthumous bar admission to Edward Garrison Draper, this court places itself and places Maryland in the vanguard of restorative justice and demonstrates conclusively that justice delayed may not be justice denied,” said former Texas appellate Justice John G. Browning, who championed Draper’s case.

Draper’s father, Garrison Draper, was a free Black man who was a tobacconist and cigar maker with limited education. He sent Edward, his only son, to public school in Philadelphia. That enabled Edward to pass Dartmouth’s entrance exam and later set out to become a lawyer.

The father and son recognized the hurdles ahead. At the time, only five Black lawyers were practicing in the United States. Edward obtained legal training from a retired Baltimore attorney through an arrangement with the Maryland Colonization Society.

Garrison supported the Society’s goal of settling free and manumitted Black Marylanders to settle in an African colony that would become the independent nation of Liberia. Many people believed emigrating from the United States was the only way for Blacks in America to live free from racism.

Six days after the state bar’s rejection, Draper, then 23, sailed to Liberia with his new wife and Lee’s written recommendation. He planned to become Liberia’s first college-educated, trained lawyer.

Tragically, Draper died Dec. 18, 1958, two weeks before his 25th birthday from tuberculosis, just short of a year after arriving in Liberia.

Maryland Supreme Court Justice Shirley M. Watts noted that Draper’s is the state’s first posthumous admission to the bar, adding that people “can only imagine” what Draper might have contributed.