Born in New York City, Guinier is the daughter of a Jewish mother and civil rights activist, Eugenia "Genii" Paprin,[REF] and Ewart Guinier, a black Panamanian-born and Jamaican and Harlem-raised scholar who was one of two blacks admitted to Harvard College in 1929.
Guinier has said that she wanted to be a civil rights lawyer since she was twelve years old, after she watched on television as Constance Baker Motley helped escort James Meredith, the first black American to enroll in the University of Mississippi [REF].