Marvin Stephens Arrington, Sr. (born February 10, 1941) is an American judge in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia and a former politician in the city of Atlanta. Elected to the Atlanta Board of Aldermen in 1969 (a precursor to the present-day City Council), he served as President of the Atlanta City Council for 17 years until his unsuccessful bid for mayor in 1997.[1] Arrington was one of the first two black students to undertake full-time studies at the Emory University School of Law in 1965. He presently serves on the Emory Board of Trustees.[2]
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Arrington was born in Grady Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia and has resided in Atlanta all his life.[3] His father, George Arrington, was a truck driver and his mother, Maggie, was employed as a domestic worker.[4] He grew up in the Grady Homes public housing project in downtown Atlanta.[4]
Arrington graduated from Henry McNeil Turner High School in 1959 and went on to attend Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University) on a football scholarship.[5] He would go on to graduate from Clark in 1963 with a bachelor of arts degree in sociology and was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.[4] In 1964, he began his legal studies at Howard University, but transferred to Emory University School of Law after his first year. He graduated with his juris doctor degree from Emory in 1967.[6]