Civil Rights Giant to Give Martin Luther King, Jr. Annual Talk
The 2011 Martin Luther King, Jr. Lecture speaker will be one of the nation’s true civil rights giants – William T. Coleman, Jr. Mr. Coleman was born in Philadelphia in 1920 and served in many capacities in the civil rights movement and in government. He was an adviser to ten U.S. Presidents, and served as Secretary of Transportation in the Ford Administration. He was the first African-American to clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court and the first African-American admitted to the Harvard Law Review. Coleman was a co-author of the legal brief in Brown v. Board of Education. He is also the former president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and served as counsel to the Warren Commission. In recognition of his extraordinary achievements, he was the 1995 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award; and in 1997 received the Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. In 2010, he published his autobiography, entitled Counsel for the Situation: Shaping the Law to Realize America’s Promise.
Mr. Coleman and his daughter, Lovida Jr., will give a talk on Mr. Coleman’s recent autobiography. Mr. Coleman will be signing copies of his book, which will be available for sale in the Lewis & Clark Law School Bookstore.
Event Details
When: January 18, 2011, 12:00pm
Where: Legal Research Center, Lewis & Clark Law School, 10015 S.W. Terwilliger Blvd, Portland, OR 97219
Cost: Free and open to the public
Contact: For more information, contact Ellen Kim at 503-768-6968
Lewis & Clark Law School’s Endowed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Speaker Series was made possible by the generous support of Lee Matthews ‘73 and Jacqueline Alexander ‘07.
