CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY OLIVER W. HILL SR.’S DREAM WAS TO SEE THE DAY WHEN AFRICAN AMERICANS RECEIVED THE SAME RIGHTS AND OPPORTUNITIES AS OTHER AMERICANS, AND TO BASK IN THE SUNLIGHT OF AN EGALITARIAN SOCIETY WHERE PEOPLE ARE VALUED FOR WHO THEY ARE, AND NOT BY THEIR RACE.
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e was instrumental in reversing segregation laws in Virginia, but was reluctant to take credit for his achievements. “All of my life I have been a team player,” he wrote in his autobiography,
T e Big Bang: Brown v. Board of Education and Beyond “… and in my legal, humanitarian, and political activities I have been part of a large team of lawyers and activists dedicated to creating a more just and humane society for all human earthlings.”1 Nevertheless, his contributions have taken their rightful
place in the annals of the Civil Rights Movement. Bestowed with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999, Hill, who died at the age of 100 in 2007, had also been honored with a bronze statue at the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial at the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond. T e memorial commemorates the 1952
Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County decision, for which Hill was the lead counsel. T e lawsuit that sought to integrate Virginia schools was one of fi ve cases incorporated under Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that prohibited segregation in public schools and led to the end of the Jim Crow era and segregation in the South. T e suit, fi led by Hill on behalf of 117 students and their parents from the all-black R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Va., took its title from the fi rst plaintiff listed, ninth grader Dorothy E. Davis. “Attorneys like Oliver Hill are a vanguard,
advocates who crystallize public opinion and are catalysts of change for those not as edu- cated or well-connected,” says Charles Ford, professor of history at Norfolk State University, and co-author with Jeff rey Littlejohn of the forthcoming book, Elusive Equality:
OLIVER W. HILL SR. IN THE 1950S. DIVERSITY & THE BAR® JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012
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