We salute the vision, courage, intellectual heft and hard work of the lawyers who conceived, developed and executed the plan to dismantle “separate but equal” in American life. Following are brief biographies on some of the leading lights of the legal team.
“As I take the measure of my life and experience, it is, at a personal level, a story of struggle and triumph. With the support of family and community, I overcame the limits of racial exclusion, discrimination, and poverty to become a leading civil rights lawyer and ultimately a federal judge. Brown v. Board sits at the center of my career and of what has been a lifelong struggle against racial inequities and injustice. My efforts and achievements have been celebrated in recent years with countless awards and honorary degrees. While this has been very gratifying, for me these have also been occasions for setting our sights on what remains to be done to rid this country of the vestiges of white supremacy."