In honor of Black History Month, the Law Library has featured a display of prominent black attorneys and judges in the United States. The display will be up in the Collaborative Commons through the month of February. Take a moment to stop by and peruse the posters and biographies of people who helped pave the way for equality and racial freedoms in the United States.
The display includes prominent figures such as:
- Thurgood Marshall – The first African-American justice of the Supreme Court
- Fred Gray – Attorney who defended both Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks
- Constance Baker Motley – The first female African-American federal judge in 1966
- George Washington Williams – A pastor, attorney, legislator, and the first African-American to serve in the Ohio House of Representatives
- Wade H. McCree – The first African American appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the second African-American Solicitor General in the history of the United States
- Leon Higginbotham, Jr. – The youngest and first African American to ever serve on a federal regulatory commission—the Federal Trade Commission.
- Charles Hamilton Houston – Dean of the Howard University School of Law where he had direct influence on nearly one-quarter of all the black lawyers in the United States—including former student Thurgood Marshall
- Charlotte E. Ray – The first Black American female lawyer in the United States
- Eleanor Holmes Norton – Lawyer who specialized in freedom of speech cases, and represented women’s rights to be reporters at Newsweek in 1970.
- Donald L. Hollowell – A civil rights champion who helped defended Dr. King and hundreds of civil rights activists in the historic civil rights campaign in Georgia
The Reporter 