Bernard F. Ashe photographs

1930s-2006

Bernard Flemming Ashe was born on March 8, 1936 in Baltimore, Maryland. His father Victor J. Ashe was an attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) who helped desegregate public schools in Virginia during the 1950s. After graduating from Howard University in 1956 and teaching in Baltimore public schools for two years, Ashe decided to pursue a legal career like his father. He returned to Howard for law school and graduated in 1961.

From 1961 to 1963, Ashe served as an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C. This was followed by an eight-year tenure as Assistant General Counsel for International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (commonly referred to as United Auto Workers, or UAW), a labor union in Detroit, Michigan, where Ashe strove to expand benefits for workers in the automotive industry.

In 1971, Ashe became General Counsel for New York State Teachers Association (NYSTA), an organization that represented the interests of teachers in New York and was affiliated with the National Education Association (NEA). NYSTA merged with the AFL-CIO-affiliated United Teachers of New York in 1973 to form New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), which became the leading federation of teacher unions in the state. At NYSUT, Ashe litigated or defended dozens of cases. He and his colleagues at NYSUT are credited with establishing the law of public sector collective bargaining in New York, as well as setting a foundation for relations between state and federal teachers associations. Ashe also wrote regular columns about teachers' rights and labor law for NYSUT's newsletter New York Teacher.

Ashe was involved in a high-profile case against NYSUT by the NEA following the former's disaffiliation with the latter in 1976. The civil action lawsuit regarded terms of the 1973 merger; NYSUT was ultimately obligated to pay NEA a multi-million dollar settlement.

Following his retirement from NYSUT in January 1996, Ashe taught law as an adjunct faculty member at Roger Williams University, Fordham University, and Cornell University. In 1997, he became a trustee of Adelphi University.

Outside of NYSUT and his teaching commitments, Ashe was active in several legal organizations, including the American Bar Association (ABA). He was the first Black lawyer appointed as chairman of one of the ABA's major sections (Labor and Employment Law) in 1982, and served on its House of Delegates, Executive Committee, Journal Editorial Board, and Board of Governors. By 1993, Ashe was the ABA's highest-ranking Black attorney. Additionally, he joined the Urban League of Albany in 1979, becoming its vice president in 1981. Ashe also served on boards for the American Arbitration Association, the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee, and the American Prepaid Legal Services Institute, and was a member of the New York State Bar Association, National Bar Association, and Commission on Judicial Nomination.

Ashe received numerous honors throughout his career. He won the American Arbitration Association's Whitney North Seymour Senior Medal in 1989, the Thurgood Marshall Justice Award from the Albany chapter of the NAACP in 2000, and the ABA's Arvid Anderson Public Employment Lawyer of the Year Award in 2017. Ashe was an Emeritus Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, and was listed in the Marquis publication Who's Who in American Law from 1985 onward. During his career, he regularly contributed to law journals and spoke at dozens of conferences.

Ashe was married to his wife Nannette Ashe for fifty-nine years. They had two sons, Walter and David. Ashe died from unspecified causes in Delmar, New York on March 8, 2023, his eighty-seventh birthday.