ed, and that Fourth of July, 100,000 Ku 
Klux Klan members marched in Jackson.
His father did very well in law and real 
estate, and Avern grew up in an upper-mid-
dle-class Jewish neighborhood that he later 
called the “golden ghetto.
” Later, he said “I 
don’t think I ever had any non-Jewish friends 
until I was in the army.
”
One of his first memories was being at 
a meeting in 1930, where he went around 
with a bucket collecting donations to build 
what would be a new Sharrey Zedek on West 
Chicago Boulevard.
Avern spent summers at Camp Tamakwa 
in Ontario, graduated from Central High 
School in January 1942, and immediately 
went to the University of Michigan, intend-
ing to become a lawyer like his father. “I 
didn’t know there was any other school or 
any other thing you could be,
” he liked to 
say. But World War II intervened. After a 
year, Avern, still just 18, was drafted into the 
U.S. Army, and was selected for a specialized 
training program in engineering.
When that program was eventually can-
celed, he transferred to another program 
designed to train doctors. “It was either that 
or get sent in as a replacement and get shot. I 
didn’t want to get shot.
”
He went to the Loyola University School 
of Medicine in Chicago and did well, but a 
few weeks after he was discharged from the 
army, he decided to go back to law school 
and U-M.
Cohn graduated in 1949, and immedi-
ately went into practice with his father; the 
men would later merge their firm with a 
much larger one, to form Honigman, Miller, 
Schwartz and Cohn.
In those early years, Avern Cohn had 
two professional passions: To really learn 
all facets of the law and to give back to the 
community in terms of public service. While 
he eventually had quite a few more lucrative 
cases, early on “I took all sorts of pro bono 
assignments for indigent defendants; defend-
ed a murder case once,
” he said.
He had a personal life as well; he married 
the former Joyce Ann Hochman in 1954, 
with whom he soon had three children — 
sons Sheldon and Tom and daughter Leslie 
Magy, who between them have given him 
seven grandchildren and two great-grand-
children.
The Cohns were a close and politically and 

socially prominent couple until her death 
from cancer in 1989; three years later, he 
married the former Lois Pincus, who sur-
vived him.
Professionally, Avern Cohn’s ambition was 
set the day he first walked into federal court. 
“I knew I wanted to be a federal judge,
” he 
told me. He also knew it would take a long 
time to get there, and it would be a path that 
involved major public service, politics and 
some luck.

DEVOTED TO PUBLIC SERVICE
Public service, to both Detroit and the 
Jewish community, was in his DNA. 
“Politically, I was a liberal Democrat,
” Cohn 
said. He rang doorbells for Adlai Stevenson’s 
futile 1952 campaign and served as treasurer 
of Citizens for Kennedy-Johnson in 1960.
He would later serve as treasurer or 
chairman of many different Democratic 
campaigns. He ran for office once, and 
only once, when he attempted to become a 
delegate to the “Con-Con,
” the state consti-
tutional convention that wrote the current 
Michigan constitution, but he ran in a heavi-
ly Republican area and lost badly.
His last brush with elected office came 
later that same year, when Michigan’s attor-
ney general resigned and the choice of a suc-
cessor came down to Cohn or Frank Kelley, 
then a lawyer in Alpena. Kelley was chosen 
and served a record 37 years.
Years later, Kelley told Cohn: “
Avern, you 
got the job you should have had, and I got 
the one I should have — you just had to wait 
longer,
” something with which the future 
federal judge totally agreed.
That didn’t mean he stayed completely out 
of politics, however; he served as treasurer 
for many Democratic campaigns before 
going on the bench and was a behind-the-
scenes adviser to many more.
Meanwhile, Cohn went on practicing law 
and getting more deeply involved in public 
service. Republican Gov. George Romney 
appointed him to a seat on the Michigan 
Social Welfare Commission, which he held 
until the commission was abolished by 
the new constitution. From 1972 to 1975, 
he served on the Michigan Civil Rights 
Commission, soon becoming its chair.
Civil rights always had been vitally 
important to Avern Cohn. Early in his 
career, he fired a secretary on the spot when 

OUR COMMUNITY

continued from page 13

14 | FEBRUARY 17 • 2022 

“AVERN COHN WAS AN ICON 

OF MICHIGAN JURISPRUDENCE. 

HE LED THE MICHIGAN 

CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION 

DURING A TUMULTUOUS 

TIME OF RACIAL RECKONING 

WHEN LEADERS LIKE JUDGE 

COHN EMBRACED THE 

CORE PRINCIPLES OF THE 

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 

AND FOUGHT TO SEE THEM 

REFLECTED IN POLICY AND 

PRACTICE.

IN HIS TIME, AS IN OURS, 

DISPARITIES IN EDUCATION 

WERE A PARAMOUNT 

CONCERN. DURING HIS 

TENURE, THE COMMISSION 

ISSUED A SCATHING 

REPORT ON SEGREGATION 

IN MICHIGAN SCHOOLS. 

JUDGE COHN CONFRONTED 

THE INTRANSIGENCE IN 

STATE GOVERNMENT TO 

REMEDYING THE PROBLEM, 

SAYING, ‘EVIDENCE IN OUR 

STUDY INDICATES THEY HAVE 

DONE MORE TO OPPOSE 

DESEGREGATION THAN TO AID 

IT.’ HE ALSO WAS A VOCAL AND 

PERSISTENT ADVOCATE FOR 

COMPREHENSIVE LEGISLATION 

TO PROTECT PEOPLE 

WITH DISABILITIES FROM 

DISCRIMINATION.” 

— PORTIA ROBERSON, 
CHAIR OF THE MICHIGAN CIVIL RIGHTS 
COMMISSION

