Kia Franklin

Remembering Civil Rights Attorney Oliver Hill

Civil rights attorney Oliver W. Hill (center of photograph), who died yesterday at age 100, leaves behind a legacy of pursuing justice and equity through the civil court system. Hill fought for school desegregation as a lawyer in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education, but he also helped pave the way for Brown in dozens of other key racial discrimination and civil rights cases, and his career spanned six decades. According to theWashington Post, Hill won about $50 million in better pay and infrastructure needs for Virginia’s black teachers and students during his career. From WaPo:

Hill, who was raised in Washington and graduated from Dunbar High School, spent his public life in Richmond, where he first won widespread attention in 1948 as the first black person elected to the City Council in 50 years… Although his term in office was short, his civil rights legacy proved far more enduring because of his role as a lead lawyer in Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Va., one of the five cases the U.S. Supreme Court combined into its landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling…

During and after the Brown decision, Hill remained an instrumental force in developing legal strategies during Virginia’s “massive resistance” to desegregation, in which many public schools closed rather than admit blacks..

Hill’s activism came at a price. A cross was burned on his lawn in 1955, and his family received so many threats that his wife installed floodlights.

At the time, Hill said officials in Richmond “had the ambulance, the fire department and the undertaker all sent to my house in about 15 minutes of each other” to intimidate him. Read full Washington Post coverage here.

Posted at 10:58 AM, Aug 06, 2007 in Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)