His and her honor are husband and wife: the Rankins are the first married couple to sit on the District of Columbia Superior Court bench

Ebony, Feb, 1991 by Richette L. Haywood

The first time they met, she laid down the law.

That was the day Michael Rankin, then deputy chief of the Felony Trial Division of the United States Attorney's Office, made the mistake of criticizing Assistant U.S.. Atty. Zinora Mitchell. "I was trying," Rankin recalls, "to point something out to her that I thought she needed to know."

Apparently Mitchell disagreed. "He was pointing out something to me that I thought was frankly none of his business," says Zinora Mitchell-Rankin, who now laughs about that brief but explosive initial encounter.

A lot has changed since that day in 1983. Fences have been mended ("We learned how to be friends"), love has blossomed ("Ultimately, it was his charm that won me over"), and history has been made (the Rankins are the first husband-wife judicial team on the District of Columbia Superior Court).

Still, for all their blessings, Judge Mitchell-Rankin and Judge Rankin are not resting on their laurels.

Life's lessons, particularly those learned while defending Black soldiers, taught him, Judge Rankin says, the importance of Black representation in the judicial system. "Of course, after that experience I had a mission," the 44-year-old Howard University Law School graduate syas. "And that mission was to make sure, as far as I can, that the law is not insensitive to the needs of different people in this country."

It was also the challenge of making America's powerful judicial system work for all people--particularly Black people--that drew his wife of three years into law. Though at 34 the Spelman College and George Washington University Law School graduate is too young to have been personally affected by the war, she is well aware of just how rough the game of life can be when you are Black in America with no representation. In fact, it was the combination of these circumstances that made her pursue a legal career. And when she talks about her impressionable years growing up in the nation's capital, she emphasizes a strong family history of middle-class parents "who have taken advantage of every little opportunity to move from one step to another."

As much a part of their environments as they are products of it, the Rankins are, in many ways, the quintessential example of the American work ethic. "Zinora--whatever her job is--is going to be the most thorough person that you can imagine," says her husband. "Whether she's working at her dad's cleaners, preparing a brief or getting ready for a trial, she's got to put in a 16-hour day."

He himself is no less passionate about his work. Reared by educators in Holly Springs, Miss., on the campus of the now-defunct Mississippi Industrial College, where his father rose from coach to president, he has a passionate sense of purpose. And it is that sense of purpose, along with a great sense of humor and a vision of the future, that he brings to everything, including the rearing of his two children from a previous marriage. Judge Rankin, and his wife (who abhors the term "stepmother"), need no prodding when it comes to sharing the joys of their relationship with Lee and John Michael.

Example: even when weighed with the pressures of a presidential appointment to the bench, the father in Michael "took the opportunity to call my kids to tell them where dad was while I was sitting there [in the White House], cooling my heels, waiting to be interviewed."

It is that responsibility to family and community that makes the Mitchell-Rankin combination in Judge Mitchell-Rankin's words, "one helluva combination." And it is that responsibility to family that makes them adhere to a former chief judge's adage that "service is the rent we pay for the space that we occupy."