James M. Nabrit, Jr.
Legal counsel in Bolling v. Sharpe, one of the five Brown cases

By Joey Berlin, class of 2004

While Thurgood Marshall became famous for arguing Brown v. Board of Education, James M. Nabrit, Jr., also received deserved credit for his work connected to the case. Nabrit became a celebrated champion of civil rights by arguing Bolling v. Sharpe, one of the five cases placed under the Brown v. Board heading.

Nabrit was born in Georgia on Sept. 4, 1900. He practiced law in Houston from 1930 until 1936, then took a teaching position at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Nabrit became an administrator at Howard, served as dean of the school from 1958 until 1960, then served as the school's president until his retirement in 1969. His nine years of service as school president came during the time of the "black power" movement.

Nabrit, Jr., established the first civil rights class in an American law school in 1937. Nabrit argued in more than one landmark civil rights case. In 1939, representing the NAACP, he argued in a voting rights case, Lane v. Wilson, involving a grandfather clause in Oklahoma that denied blacks the right to vote. According to his son, Nabrit then worked with Marshall on cases during the 1940s.

In Bolling v. Sharpe, Nabrit took the case of a black Washington student named Spottswood Bolling, Jr. After the case joined four others as components of Brown v. Board of Education, Nabrit argued the case with another black attorney, George EC Hayes. Nabrit did not merely argue for the equalization of black schools, as many observers in the black community wanted him to do; rather, he argued that school segregation was entirely unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bolling and, in the picture at right, Hayes, Marshall and Nabrit are pictured congratulating each other following the Brown rulings.

In an interview in the July/August 2001 issue of The Washington Lawyer, James Nabrit III said that as he was growing up, "My father was always busy and had great intellectual abilities, but he was a kind and devoted parent who came home to dinner regularly and played ball with my friends and me. He was very sociable and gregarious." Nabrit III followed in the footsteps of his father, serving as an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund for 30 years. Nabrit, Jr., died Dec. 27, 1997.