Barbara Youngblood: Using Law’s Power

Barbara Youngblood, Orange County’s first female black attorney, says her objective isn’t wealth or status. It is to work with people like Maria.

The young Mexican woman fled her country after being raped. Alone, pregnant and unable to speak English, Maria was told by people in Orange County that if she didn’t give up her baby for adoption, she would be deported. Terrified, Maria signed release papers in the hospital.

Five months later, Youngblood got the baby back.

“There wasn’t a dry eye in the conference room that day,” Youngblood recalled. “That baby glommed right on to his mother. It was if he had an inner sense. He was happy and comfortable in her arms.”

Youngblood, 51, is director of the Legal Aid Society of Orange County and supervises its branch in Huntington Beach, her hometown. She concentrates on cases that involve family law, government benefits and housing for clients screened from almost 2,000 people seeking help annually.

The “messy and heartbreaking” cases increase dramatically here each year, she said. Today, she estimated, she sees 20 times more child molestation cases than she did 15 years ago. Another new phenomenon is what some judges call “crack grandparent cases,” she said.

“It’s usually someone trying to get their grandchild away from their son or daughter who’s on crack or in prison. In the ‘70s, I had no cases like that. In the past two years, I’ve had 60.”

Youngblood’s background is far from that of most of her clients. As a child in a beach town in Connecticut, she played in ponds and swamps and searched for ducks and snapping turtles. Everyone knew everyone, she said, and it was a “normal and quiet life with lots of fresh air, open space and sledding on the hill.”

Although hers was one of the few black families in the community, Youngblood said she never experienced overt racism until her 16th summer, when she traveled to Virginia and encountered a segregated movie theater and a “for whites only” sign on a drinking fountain outside Woolworth’s.

“I was terrified,” she said of the experience. “It was a real awakening.”

After graduating from the University of Connecticut and working in Philadelphia and San Francisco, Youngblood came to Orange County in 1969 with her husband.

Bored with her career as a physical therapist, she attended law school at night for four years and then started working for Legal Aid in 1975. Three years later, she went into private practice, returning to Legal Aid in 1984.

“Yes, I could make more money in private practice,” said Youngblood, now divorced. “But I have enough for the things I want to do in my life.” The reward, she said, is personal satisfaction.

Although most of her clients don’t come back to say thank you, one did, she said.

On Valentine’s Day about four years ago, Maria came to see her and brought a photograph of her son, the only photograph that is displayed in the attorney’s office today.