Former U.S. Presidential Adviser To Speak
William T. Coleman Jr., a distinguished civil rights leader and former adviser to several presidents, will speak at a $50-perplate dinner sponsored by the Robert H. Jackson Center. The dinner is the final event in the Jackson Center’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education II decision in which the Supreme Court said school desegregation should happen with all deliberate speed. The dinner begins at $6 p.m. on Wednesday at the Chautauqua Athenaeum. Reservations are required by calling the Robert H. Jackson Center at 483-6646.
Honorees to be recognized at the dinner are: Coleman; Dr. Ophelia De Laine Gona, daughter of civil rights activist, Rev. Jospeh A. De Laine; and, four of the U.S. Supreme Court Law Clerk’s serving the court during the Brown opinion. Law clerks include: E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr, Esq.; Earl E. Pollock, Esq.; Gordon B. Davidson, Esq.; and Daniel J. Meador, Esq.
‘‘Serving as close aid to Thurgood Marshall, Mr. Coleman is recognized as a main architect of the legal strategy leading up to Brown v. Board of Education,’’ said Gregory L. Peterson, Jackson Center president. ‘‘We are deeply honored that Mr. Coleman will be joining us as we celebrate this civil rights milestone and some of the people who were instrumental in changing the course of history.’’
Coleman’s law career includes serving as law clerk for Justice Felix Frankfurter of the United States Supreme Court in 1948- 49. He was the first African- American law clerk to serve the court. He also served as Law Clerk for Judge Herbert Goodrich of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, in 1947- 48.
Serving as a member of Thurgood Marshall’s legal team at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Coleman contributed to the work resulting in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Coleman then represented the Pennsylvania in the effort to remove racial restrictions at Girard College in Philadelphia and argued the case that upheld the denial of tax-exempt status to Bob Jones University. Coleman has argued numerous other cases before the Supreme Court involving banking, natural gas, nuclear energy, and other business and regulatory issues.
During his career, Coleman served in advisory or consultant positions to seven U.S. Presidents. He served as a member of the President’s Committee on Government Employment Policy from 1959 to 1961 and as assistant counsel to the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy in 1964. Coleman served both as legal advisor for the Council on Environmental Quality and as a member of the President’s National Commission on Productivity in 1970. He was appointed the nation’s fourth Secretary of Transportation, serving from 1975 to 1977. He practiced law in New York and in Philadelphia until his Cabinet appointment in 1975.
In 1977, he received the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award after serving as its president in 1971 and later as its chairman. The President of France commissioned Coleman as an officer of the National Order of the League of Honor in 1979 — Officer, de la Legion d’Honneur — and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995 by President Clinton. In 2000, The American Law Institute awarded him the Henry J. Friendly Medal for his outstanding contributions to the law.