Edith Spurlock Sampson was born Edith Spurlock in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on October 13, 1901. Pittsburgh was one of the urban destinations for Blacks leaving the South in search of better economic opportunities. She grew up in a working class family, one of seven children, and attended Pittsburgh’s Peabody High School. Her parents were frugal by necessity, handing down clothing from child to child and avoiding waste. The children worked as soon as they were able, and Sampson got her first job when she was 14, scaling and boning fish in a fish market. Although the family was poor, their hard work and frugality paid off when they were able to buy a home. When Edith graduated from Peabody High School, her Sunday school teacher helped her get a position with Associated Charities. After working briefly for Associated Charities in Pittsburgh, Sampson decided to enroll in the New York University School of Social Work.
While there, Edith took a required course in criminology taught by George W. Kirchwey of the Columbia University School of Law. Sampson excelled in her studies and her professor told her that she had the talent to be a lawyer. Upon graduation, she married Rufus Sampson, a field agent for Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama and became Edith Spurlock Sampson. Sampson and her husband moved to Chicago and worked as a social worker for the Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society, finding placements for orphaned and neglected children in adoptive and foster homes. Kirchwey, who was in town to give a speech, further encouraged her to enter law school. While working full-time as a social worker during the day, she studied law at night. In 1925, she graduated from John Marshall Law School and ranked first of the 95 enrolled in the course on jurisprudence, earning a special commendation from Dean Edward T. Lee.
She continued her studies at the graduate law school of Loyola University. After receiving her bachelor of laws degree in 1925, Sampson sat for the Illinois bar exam and, despite her shining record, failed it. She attributed her setback to overconfidence and claimed it was the best thing that could have happened to her. Not at all discouraged, she continued her studies at the graduate law school of Loyola University. In 1927, Sampson was the first woman to receive a law degree from Loyola University. That same year, Sampson was admitted to the Illinois bar. While in graduate school, Sampson had been appointed probation officer for the Juvenile Court of Cook County, Illinois. She worked as a probation officer and then assistant referee in juvenile court. As probation officer, she bridge the gap between the court and the youth's everyday life. As the assisant referee she assist judges by managing specific types of juvenile cases.
In 1927, Sampson opened a law firm on the south side of Chicago in the middle of Black neighborhoods. Her firm specialized in domestic relations, criminal law and offered legal advice to African Americans that could not afford an attorney. When Sampson represented her clients in court, she stated, “I talk from my heart and let the law take care of itself.” In 1934, Sampson established her own practice and became one of the first women to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court. As a social activist, she affiliated with the Chicago Professional Women’s Club, the Afro-World Fellowship, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and League of Women Voters, and the Women’s Progressive Committee, serving for a time as president of each organization. In 1938, Sampson and Black attorney Georgia Jones Ellis became the first Black women to join the Chicago Chapter of the National Association of Women Lawyers.
Sampson's career took a new turn in 1949 when, as chair of the executive committee of the National Council of Negro Women, she was invited to be one of 26 American civic, cultural, labor, and welfare leaders to participate in an international lecture tour. Using her own money, she traveled throughout the world, participating in public debates about current political questions and meeting with foreign dignitaries. In 1949, Sampson was part of the Round-the-World Town Meeting which was a program that sent twenty-six prominent Americans on a world tour meeting leaders of foreign countries and participating in public political debates and radio broadcasts. In these meetings, Sampson sought to counter the propaganda in the Soviet Union during the Cold War regarding the treatment and exploitation of African Americans in the United States. Her work caught the attention of President Harry S. Truman.
Her skill and personality were much admired. Once, while speaking to the League of Pakistani Women, she referred to her efforts to raise $5,000 to cover her travel expenses, and the audience surprised her by collecting the sum and presenting it to her. She accepted the gift and immediately turned it over to the Pakistani league for their social work. When the lecture circuit was made permanent and named the World Town Hall Seminar, Sampson was elected president by the membership. Edith Sampson also spoke out against Soviet communism. She compared it to slavery and accused the Soviet Union of holding prisoners of war from World War II as slaves. She reportedly told the Soviet Ambassador, "We Negroes aren't interested in Communism... We were slaves too long for that. Nobody is happy with second-class citizenship, but our best chances are in the framework of American democracy."
Sampson acknowledged racial discrimination in her speeches, but she chose to emphasize the positive aspects of democracy for African American people. She described a 1950 trip to Austria with Ebony magazine: "There were times when I had to bow my head in shame when talking about how some Negroes have been treated in the United States… . But I could truthfully point out that these cases, bad as they are, are the exceptions—the Negro got justice for every one where justice was denied. I could tell them that Negroes have a greater opportunity in America to work out their salvation than anywhere else in the world."
Because of her work on the Town Meeting tour and her public speaking, President Truman chose Edith Sampson to be an alternate U.S. delegate to the United Nations substituting for Eleanor Roosevelt. This happened on August 24, 1950. This made her the first African American to officially represent the United States at the United Nations. At the U.N, Sampson served on the Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee, which covered many areas including land reform, reparation of prisoners, repatriation of Greek children, and radio jamming. Her first appearance was on September 28, 1950, in an appeal to the U.N to continue advisory work in social welfare. While working at the U.N, Sampson went on several international lecture tours. Sampson was part of the U.N's Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee. She also proposed a plan to pressure the Soviet Union to send home its prisoners of war from World War II.
She was reappointed as alternate delegate again in 1952, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower later made her member-at-large of the U.S. Commission of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Many of Sampson's speeches concerned the status of African Americans in America. While she admitted to injustices and imperfections in the social structure, she remained adamant in her defense of the United States as a country where the struggle for justice could take place in an atmosphere of hope. She denounced once more the images used by the Soviets in particular to criticize the social plight of American Blacks, and hotly defended the United States against ideological attack. Her comments met with some criticism from American journalists who thought she overstated the case and made the status of African Americans appear more positive than it was. Some civil rights leaders criticized Sampson, saying that she downplayed the barriers African Americans faced and did not sufficiently support the country's civil rights movement.
In 1961, she became the first Black U.S. representative to hold membership on the U.S. delegation to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 1962, at age 61, Edith Spurlock Sampson became the first African American woman elected to the Chicago Municipal Court. Her cases involved domestic relations, and by the late 1960s, as a judge of a branch of the Circuit Court of Cook County, landlord-tenant issues. She often heard cases about housing problems involving people who were struggling. She was adamantly opposed to evicting tenants, to the dismay of landlords. Many saw her as "an understanding but tough grandmother" in these cases. She was a friend and supporter of Mayor Richard J. Daley who backed her as a candidate for the court when William Dawson, a leader in Chicago's Black community, opposed her. In 1966, Sampson was the first Black person elected to a seat on the Circuit Court of Cook County.
By 1969 she had apparently regained her faith in working within the system, saying in a speech: "We learned that we could work within the establishment, the system, without necessarily knuckling under to it." Sampson received numerous honorary degrees, including a doctor of law degree from John Marshall Law School. Although she had no children, she was much admired by her nieces and nephews, two of whom followed her into the legal profession and became judges. Edith Spurlock Sampson made her mark as a dedicated servant who served her people, was the first of many positions, and was a true inspiration to many all over the world. Her strong personality impressed everyone who met her. Said one admirer, "She works like a dynamo, talks like a pneumatic drill, and her warmth penetrates any room she enters." Sampson retired from the bench in 1978 and died the following year at the age of 78.