Home ›
About ›
Communications ›
NCBA News ›
2006 News Articles › Chambers Receives Thurgood Marshall Award
Chambers Receives Thurgood Marshall Award
Article Date: Thursday, August 24, 2006
Written By: Russell Rawlings
Julius Chambers accepts Thurgood Marshall Award. |
Julius Chambers is the 2006 recipient of the Thurgood Marshall Award, presented annually by the American Bar Association’s Individual Rights & Responsibilities Section.
Presentation took place in Honolulu on Saturday evening, Aug. 5, at the ABA Annual Meeting. Chambers was nominated by both the North Carolina Bar Association and Judge James Wynn of the N.C. Court of Appeals.
The renowned Charlotte civil rights attorney is the 15th recipient of this award, established in 1992 in honor of the first African-American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court “who epitomized individual commitment, in word and action, to the cause of civil rights in this country. The award is intended to recognize similar long-term contributions by other members of the legal profession to the advancement of civil rights, civil liberties, and human rights in the United States.”
Justice Marshall was the initial recipient of this award.
Jack Greenberg, esteemed professor of law at Columbia University who along with Chambers has devoted much of his career to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, received the award in 1996 and readily participated in the NCBA’s nomination.
“I have known him since he graduated from Columbia Law School.” Greenberg wrote. “From that time on he has been a tireless, highly effective champion of civil rights and one of the great human beings of his generation. I would be honored to be joined by him as one of the award’s recipients.”
Henry Frye, right, congratulates longtime colleague and friend Julius Chambers. |
Letters of support were also provided by NCBA Past-President Judge Allyson K. Duncan of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and former N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Henry E. Frye who attended the ceremony.
In 1967, Frye and Chambers became the first African Americans to join the NCBA.
“Julius Chambers’ achievements are legendary, and many of them are documented in court cases, law review articles, casebooks, documentaries and general media,” Frye wrote. “From my own personal knowledge, he has spent his entire adult life working to make life better for those who do not enjoy the blessings of liberty and freedom from want.”
“There are more reasons to admire Julius than can be recounted in a letter,” added Judge Duncan. “There are few individuals whose resumes more effectively epitomize the commitment to civil rights recognized by this award.”
Chambers was a senior at Peabody High School in the Montgomery County town of Troy when the initial Brown v. Board of Education ruling was handed down on May 17, 1954, but he has been intimately involved in the cause of school desegregation, and desegregation in general, ever since.
Noteworthy cases in which he has been involved include Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, Griggs v. Duke Power Co., and Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody.
Chambers was the first African American to serve as editor of the law review at University of North Carolina School of Law, where he graduated first in a class of 100 in 1962, and later established the state’s first integrated law firm.
He also served as director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, as chancellor of his alma mater, North Carolina Central University, and as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and the University of Michigan.
Chambers returned to private practice in 2001 with the Charlotte office of Ferguson Stein Chambers Gresham & Sumter, and continues to teach, currently serving as clinical professor of law and director of the Center for Civil Rights at the UNC School of Law.