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active in civil rights. T roughout his undergraduate years, Payton worked and studied part-time, ultimately graduating with a B.S. degree in Mathematics in 1973. Payton attended Harvard Law School during the Boston busing crisis when legally mandated desegrega- tion of public schools erupted into protests and riots. As a law student, he worked on taking affi davits from African American students who were injured in the race-related violence. After graduating in 1977, he clerked for Judge Cecil F. Poole of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (the fi rst African American federal judge in Northern California), and then moved to Washington, D.C. where he joined Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr (now WilmerHale). He took leave from the fi rm in the early 1990s to serve


McDougall describes


“ JOHN HAD BOTH GREAT INTELLECT AND CURIOSITY. HE WASN’T JUST A LAWYER. HE WAS ALSO AN ELOQUENT TRANSLATOR OF THE IMPERATIVE FOR FULL CIVIL RIGHTS TO NOURISH CITIZENSHIP AND HUMANITY.” —DEBO P. ADEGBILE


as the Corporation Counsel of the District of Columbia, and in 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated him to be assistant attorney general for civil rights. After a year, Payton left D.C. for South Africa where his


wife was working as a member of the Independent Electoral Commission. Payton served on an international observer team that included members from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “For him to join me in South Africa was a natural culmina-


tion of John’s central role in the anti-apartheid movement in the U.S.,” says McDougall, a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a renowned expert on minority issues. T e couple met in 1980 as a result of their anti-apart- heid activities; she was a full-time activist and he was involved in groups that included TransAfrica and the 1985 Free South Africa Movement. T ey were married in 1993. “One of the major tactics that lit up the movement were


the daily demonstrations in front of the South African Embassy in D.C. John led a committee of lawyers that was organized to get the protestors who came forward to be arrested out of jail every day for over a year. T at was an integral piece of the organizing structure of the movement.”


MCCA.COM


Payton’s time at the LDF as the jewel in the crown of his remarkable career. “John was exactly where he needed to be. T e job played on all his strengths and who he was. Right up until a week before he went into the hospital,


John was traveling the country giving speeches and raising money for LDF causes. He was on fi re, loving every day of his job.” Matters important to him toward the end of his life include the ballot initiative he organized under the LDF banner to alter the T ree Strikes Law in California, and raising awareness about the “School-to- Prison Pipeline,” an increasingly prevalent cycle in which mostly students of color, particularly


African American boys, are systematically funneled out of school and into the streets and the juvenile correction sys- tem. He was also leading the team that mounted a defense in the University of Texas pursuit of diversity through admissions in Fisher v. University of Texas. T e important affi rmative action case, slated to go before the U.S. Supreme Court later this year, challenges the precedent that Payton helped to establish with the Michigan cases. Payton’s illness was brief and his death unanticipated,


leaving his wife unprepared and shocked. His colleagues and friends were equally stunned. “At LDF, we felt we had lost our leader mid-conversation,” says Adegbile. “He was vigorous and in command of himself. It seemed like he’d go on forever. “John had both great intellect and curiosity. T ey don’t


always come together. He wasn’t just a lawyer. He was also an eloquent translator of the imperative for full civil rights to nourish citizenship and humanity.” Payton understood that the great victories involve hard


work; they don’t happen overnight and aren’t achieved by one person, adds Adegbile. Similarly, he knew the civil rights struggle is not a sprint but a relay, and accordingly he had prepared a new generation of civil rights attorneys to whom he could pass the baton. Yes, brilliant, indeed. D&B


JULY/AUGUST 2012 DIVERSITY & THE BAR®


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