Spottswood William Robinson III

Spottswood William Robinson III (July 26, 1916 – October 11, 1998) was a civil rights attorney. In the early 1950s, Robinson and his law-partner Oliver Hill litigated several civil rights lawsuits in Virginia. In 1951, Robinson and Hill took up the cause of the African American students at the segregated R.R. Moton High School in Farmville who had walked out of their dilapidated school. The subsequent lawsuit, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County which was consolidated with four other cases decided under Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954. In their arguments before the Court, Robinson made the first argument on behalf of the plaintiffs.^[1]

[edit] Biography

Born in Richmond, Virginia on July 26, 1916, Robinson received his under-graduate degree from Virginia Union University. In 1939, Robinson received his law degree from Howard University, graduating first in his class. He was a faculty member of the Howard University School of Law from his graduation in 1939 until 1947, and was one of the core attorneys of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund ("LDF") from 1948 to 1960. Through the NAACP LDF he worked on cases such as Brown v. Board of Education and Chance v. Lambeth (which invalidated carrier-enforced racial segregation in interstate transportation).^[2] From 1960-1964 Robinson was Dean of the Howard University School of Law. He also served as a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights from 1961 to 1963. In 1964 he bcame the first African-American to be appointed the United States district court for the District of Columbia. In 1966, Judge Robinson became the first African-American appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit when he was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson. On May 7, 1981, he became the first African American to serve as Chief Judge of the D.C. circuit court. Judge Robinson took senior status in 1989 and later retired. He died in October of 1998.

Faculty, Howard University School of Law, 1939-1948
Private practice, Richmond, Virginia, 1943-1960
Counsel / representative, Virginia NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, 1948-1950
Southeast regional counsel, NAACP, 1951-1960
Professor / dean, Howard University School of Law, 1960-1963
U.S. Commission of Civil Rights, 1961-1963

Preceded by George Thomas Washington	United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit 1966–1989	Succeeded by Arthur Raymond Randolph