Saluting Mr. Julius Chambers

 

 

Civil Rights Attorney & Former Chancellor @ NCCU Julius Chambers has passed away. He made a significant impact on Civil Rights law served the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, opened the first racially integrated law firm in the South (1964), one ...his landmark civil rights cases was Swann v. the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education in 1971, which led to cross-town student bus transit that helped to integrate local schools. He was 76 years old. He will be missed.

Julius Chambers was born and raised in Montgomery County, North Carolina he grew up during the Jim Crow era. As a young boy he witnessed racial discrimination at his father's auto repair business was often a target for racial discrimination, a white man refused to pay his father for the services that were being provided, his father could not afford to sue the man because he did not have a lawyer. This event inspired Chambers to become a lawyer and fight for racial and civil rights.

Chambers gradated from high school in 1954, attended North Carolina Central University he was student body President, graduated summa cum laude with a degree in History. He attended graduate school from the University of Michigan with a degree in History in 1959. He enrolled at law school at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was the first African American editor-in-chief for the school's law review and graduated first in his class of 100. Chambers also became the university's first African American to gain membership in honor society Order of the Golden Fleece, he was also a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. In 1964 he earned his  L.L.M from Columbia Law School. From 1963-1964 he served on the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York he was selected by Thurgood Marshall.

In June of 1964, he opened his own law firm which would eventually become the first integrated law firm in the South. Chambers and his fellow founding partners  James E. Ferguson II & Adam Stein, as well as lawyers from the LDF (Legal Defense Fund) were able to successfully argue cases against the US Supreme Court that would influence American civil rights law with landmark cases such as:  Swann v. Charlotte -Mecklenburg Board of Education ( 1971),  Griggs v. Duke Power Co. ( 1971),  and Albemarle  Paper Co. v. Mo0dy (1975).


Thank you for all of your hard work Mr. Chambers.