Haywood Burns audio and moving image collection

1988-1995

Born in Peekskill, New York, William Haywood Burns (June 15, 1940 - April 2, 1996) was an author, civil rights activist, lawyer, professor, and the second dean of the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law. Burns graduated from Harvard College with honors, and from Yale University Law School in 1966.

After law school, Burns joined the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, but left shortly after to become law clerk to US District Court Judge Constance Baker Motley. He was assistant counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc. from 1967 to 1969. He also served as general counsel to Martin Luther King's Poor People's Campaign in 1968. Burns was one of the founding members of the National Council of Black Lawyers in 1969, and became its first director from 1970 to 1973. Other notable clients include activist Angela Davis, and men incarcerated at Attica Prison who faced further charges following the 1971 uprising.

Burns was the founding dean of the City College Urban Legal Studies Program from 1977 to 1987 and dean of CUNY School of Law from 1987 to 1994. He was president of the Nation Institute, a foundation devoted to the alternative press and social justice. After meeting with Nelson Mandela in Harlem, Burns was a legal advisor to the drafting of South Africa's interim constitution in 1993. He died in an automobile accident while attending the International Association of Democratic Lawyers conference in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1996.