Found 5 collections related to African American lawyers

Clyde Murphy, a lawyer, pursued social justice throughout his career. Born on June 26, 1948, in Topeka, Kansas, Clyde moved to Miami, Florida, along with his father and stepmother, when he was four years old. He attended high school at North Dade Junior-Senior High School, where he excelled academically, wrote and took photographs for the school paper, and played the trumpet. He also attended the Yale University Summer High School for two summers, 1965-1966. Murphy graduated from Yale University in 1970, and Columbia University School of Law in 1975. Prior to law school, he worked as a community organizer and Assistant Director for Program Administration at Kings County Addictive Diseases Hospital in New York. After receiving his law degree and passing the New York State Bar in 1976, he worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) from 1975-1990; as assistant counsel, he focused on cases involving employment discrimination, police misconduct, and voting rights. One case of note was Westinghouse Electric Corp v. Vaughn, which he successfully argued in front of the United States Supreme Court. At LDF, Murphy also served as deputy director-counsel and director of the Voting Rights Project. In 1995, Murphy became the executive director of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (CLCCRUL). His areas of concern continued to be employment discrimination and voting rights, along with fair housing, predatory lending, and affirmative action. One of Murphy's achievements, Lewis v. City of Chicago, alleged that the 1995 firefighter entrance exam's cutoff score favored white applicants; Murphy and the CLCCRUL filed the lawsuit in 1998 and the Supreme Court ruled in the African American applicants' favor in 2010. Throughout the years, Murphy also lectured and taught at New York University (NYU) School of Law and Vassar College. Murphy's additional accomplishments include admission to the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eight and Eleventh Circuits, and the United States District Court for the Southern and Eastern Districs of New York. Murphy died in 2010. The Clyde Murphy papers primarily consist of professional materials related to his positions at NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) and the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (CLCCRUL). There is a limited amount of personal material, such as high school and college documents and some correspondence. Additionally, there are some writing samples, including excerpts from journals and drafts of essays related to civil rights and Barack Obama. The series on Murphy's work at LDF contains case materials, which is composed of reading material (briefs from previous cases, academic papers, and articles), briefs, and correspondence. Also, this series consists of administrative material, such as staff memos and grant information; other writing by Murphy (speeches and articles); statements by LDF on various topics (for example, whether or not to represent Angela Davis); and publications by LDF. The series on Murphy's work at CLCCRUL is structured in a similar manner; there is administrative material, such as memos, address lists, and monthly calendars, followed by case materials (briefs, correspondence, and reading material), other writing by Murphy, and CLCCRUL publications. In addition, this series contains outreach material, or material on task forces and committees on which Murphy served, under the auspices of CLCCRUL, for other organizations. The series on teaching is the smallest; it consists of one folder, a reading packet for a course that Murphy taught at NYU. The last series, printed or reading material, contains writing by others, some published and some unpublished; the majority of this material is related to legal issues pursued by Murphy, such as police misconduct, civil rights, and voting rights. This material includes published articles, chapters from books, newspaper clippings, and books; it also includes unpublished dissertations, papers delivered at conferences, speeches, and manuscripts. less

William Haywood Burns was a civil rights activist, lawyer, educator and dean of the City University of New York Law School at Queens College. He is the author of The Voices of Negro Protest in America, published in 1963. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, Burns served as legal counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc., from 1967-1969. He was one of the founding members and became the first director (1970-1973) of the National Council of Black Lawyers (NCBL), an organization that helped to acquit Angela Davis of murder and kidnapping charges that also represented other black political activists, including Black Panther members and Vietnam War resisters. Highly recognized for his work with the Attica prison uprising in 1971, Burns spent much of his career working tirelessly to recruit more people of color into the legal field, and was committed to educating lawyers about the complexities of representing underserved communities for the public good. Also active in the anti-apartheid for a quarter of a decade, Burns was a member of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. During one of his trips to South Africa, he was killed by a speeding lorry. The Haywood Burns Papers is organized into seven series: Personal, Correspondence, Legal, Writings, City University of New York (CUNY), Subject Files and Organizations. The majority of the Papers represent Burns' legal work and the various organizations with which he was connected including the National Council of Black Lawyers, Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Community Service Society of New York, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, National Lawyers Guild, ACLU's National Prison Project, New World Foundation, Twenty-First Century Foundation, and the Vera Institute of Justice. less

The Blacks in the Railroad Industry Collection is comprised of a variety of materials documenting the struggle of black railroad employees against ouster from the industry by collusive actions of the companies and the unions. While provenance seems to be uncertain, holograph notes on many of the documents appear to have been done by Robert Wood, editor of "The Railroad Workers' Link," a newspaper published by the Railroad Committee of the Communist Party. In addition, the few original items in the collection are addressed specifically to him or to the "Link.". less

James Weldon Johnson was a publisher, educator, lawyer, composer, artist, diplomat, and civil rights leader. Together with his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, he wrote the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which came to be known as the "Negro National Anthem", as well as a large number of popular songs for the musical stage of the early twentieth century. Johnson also served as consul of the United States to Venezuela and Nicaragua. He wrote several books and served as editor of the New York Age. From 1920-1931, Johnson was field secretary, then secretary, of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1930, he became chair of Creative Literature and Writing at Fisk University. The James Weldon Johnson collection consists primarily of programs honoring Johnson following his death in 1938, including those sponsored by the NAACP, Yale University Library, Virginia Union University, and Hampton Institute. Two programs printed during his lifetime provide information about subjects for his lectures and work with students at Fisk University. News clippings discuss a marker erected, in 1972, at the site of his home in Jacksonville, Florida. An obituary marks the passing of his widow, Grace Nail Johnson, in 1976, and two towels with their embroidered initials complete the collection. less