James Madison Nabrit Jr. (September 7, 1900 – December 27, 1997) was a prominent American civil rights attorney who won several important arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, served as president of Howard University for much of the 1960s, and was appointed Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations by President Lyndon B. Johnson. His brother, Samuel M. Nabrit, was appointed to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. His son, James Nabrit III, was also a civil rights attorney.
James Nabrit Jr. was born in Georgia on September 7, 1900, to James Nabrit Sr., a Baptist minister and baker, and Gertrude Augusta West. Reverend James M. Nabrit Sr., a son of former slaves, taught at Central City College, [1] became President of the American Baptist Institute in Nashville, and Secretary of the National Baptist Convention. Himself a learned college graduate, who taught some of his children Latin, Greek and physics, James M. Nabrit Sr. was the father of eight college graduates, and seven who earned advanced degrees. Nabrit Jr. graduated from Morehouse College in 1923 and from Northwestern University Law School in 1927.
Nabrit Jr. married Norma Walton in 1924—they would remain married until her death in 1988 [2] —and taught at colleges in Louisiana and Arkansas from 1927 to 1930. [3] From 1930 to 1936 he practiced law in Houston, Texas. [3] Nabrit began teaching law at Howard University in 1936 and served as dean of Howard's law school from 1958 to 1960 and president of the university from 1960 to 1969. [3] [4] In 1938 he started the first formal civil rights law course in the United States. [5]
Beginning in the 1940s and through the 1950s, Nabrit handled a number of civil rights cases for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, working with prominent attorneys such as Thurgood Marshall, later a Supreme Court justice. Notably, Nabrit argued Bolling v. Sharpe , a companion case of Brown v. Board of Education . [3]
Nabrit served as president of Howard University from 1960 to 1965. From 1965 to 1967 he served as Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations—the first African American hold this position. [6] He returned to the presidency of Howard from 1968 to 1969, [4] stepping down under pressure from the American Association of University Professors after he expelled 18 disruptive students. Nabrit said that he had simply been waiting for the university to choose a successor. He died in Washington, D.C., on December 27, 1997, at the age of 97. He was survived by his only son, James Nabrit III. [3]
James Morris Lawson Jr. is an American activist and university professor. He was a leading theoretician and tactician of nonviolence within the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1960s, he served as a mentor to the Nashville Student Movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was expelled from Vanderbilt University for his civil rights activism in 1960, and later served as a pastor in Los Angeles for 25 years.
Richard Brevard Russell Jr. was an American politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 66th Governor of Georgia from 1931 to 1933 before serving in the United States Senate for almost 40 years, from 1933 to 1971. Russell was a founder and leader of the conservative coalition that dominated Congress from 1937 to 1963, and at his death was the most senior member of the Senate. He was for decades a leader of Southern opposition to the civil rights movement.
Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr. was an American business executive and civil rights attorney who worked for various civil rights movement organizations before becoming a close advisor to President Bill Clinton.
Martin Luther King Sr. was an African-American Baptist pastor, missionary, and an early figure in the Civil Rights Movement. He was the father and namesake of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. He was the senior pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church from 1931 to 1975.
Donald Lee Hollowell was an American civil rights attorney during the Civil Rights Movement, in the state of Georgia. He successfully sued to integrate Atlanta's public schools, Georgia colleges, universities and public transit, freed Martin Luther King Jr. from prison, and mentored civil rights attorneys. The first black regional director of a federal agency, Hollowell is best remembered for his instrumental role in winning the desegregation of the University of Georgia in 1961. He is the subject of a 2010 documentary film, Donald L. Hollowell: Foot Soldier for Equal Justice.
American Baptist College is a private, Baptist college in Nashville, Tennessee, affiliated with the National Baptist Convention, USA. Founded in 1924, its predecessor in black Baptist education was Roger Williams University, a Nashville college begun in the late-19th century and closed in the early 20th century. Upon full accreditation by the American Association of Bible Colleges, ABTS dropped use of the term "Theological Seminary" and renamed itself American Baptist College. The college has an 82% acceptance rate. In Fall 2019, 77% of students were retained after the first year of attendance.
James Madison Nabrit III was an African American civil rights attorney who won several important decisions before the U.S. Supreme Court. He was also a long-time attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Joseph Harrison Jackson was an American pastor and the longest serving President of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
Lemuel Augustus Penn was the Assistant Superintendent of Washington, D.C. public schools, a decorated veteran of World War II and a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Reserve who was murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan, nine days after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Whitney North Seymour Sr. was an American attorney who worked primarily as a trial lawyer. He served as assistant solicitor general during the presidency of Herbert Hoover. In 1960, he was elected the 84th president of the American Bar Association. Seymour served for many years as the managing partner of the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
Bernard Lafayette, Jr. is an American civil rights activist and organizer, who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He played a leading role in early organizing of the Selma Voting Rights Movement; was a member of the Nashville Student Movement; and worked closely throughout the 1960s movements with groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the American Friends Service Committee.
Howard University School of Law is the law school of Howard University, a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is one of the oldest law schools in the country and the oldest historically black law school in the United States.
Jesse Ernest Wilkins Sr. was a U.S. lawyer, labor leader, undersecretary in the Eisenhower administration and both the first African-American to be appointed to a sub-cabinet position in the United States Government and the first to attend White House cabinet-level meetings.
Oscar William Adams, Jr. was the first African-American Alabama Supreme Court justice and the first African American elected to statewide office in Alabama.
Samuel Milton Nabrit was an American marine biologist. He was the first African American to be awarded a doctoral degree from Brown University, the first Morehouse College graduate to earn a Ph.D. and the first African American appointed to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. He was also the first African American to serve on the Brown University Board of Trustees.
Jonathan R. Alger is an American academic and the current president of James Madison University. Alger became the university’s sixth president on July 1, 2012. Alger is the sixth president since the university’s founding in 1908. He was formally inaugurated on March 15, 2013.
This is a timeline of the civil rights movement in the United States, a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for people of color. The goals of the movement included securing equal protection under the law, ending legally institutionalized racial discrimination, and gaining equal access to public facilities, education reform, fair housing, and the ability to vote.
Nabrit is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Sadie Gray Mays was an African-American social worker, trained at the University of Chicago. As the wife of Benjamin Mays, she was also a prominent Baptist minister's wife, a college president's wife, and a civil rights activist.
Romeo Marcus Williams was an American civil rights attorney who organized large-scale student protests against segregation in Marshall, Texas. He was also a junior partner of Dallas, Texas civil rights attorney, William J. Durham, who served as lead counsel on two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases, Sweatt v. Painter, and Smith v. Allwright.
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