JANE BOLIN, 98 Pioneering N.Y. judge
Jane Bolin, whose appointment as a family court judge by New York City Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia in 1939 made her the first black woman in the United States to become a judge, died Monday in Queens, N.Y.
She was the first black woman to graduate from Yale Law School, the first to join the New York City Bar Association and the first to work in the office of the New York City corporation counsel, the city's legal department. She reluctantly retired in 1979 after 40 years as a judge.