Background
James Nabrit, Junior. was born in Georgia on September 7, 1900 to James Nabrit, Senior, a Baptist minister and baker, and Gertrude Augusta W.
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James Madison
Edit ProfileEducation
He graduated from Morehouse College in 1923 and from Northwestern University Law School in 1927.
Career
Nabrit married Norma Walton in 1924—they would remain married until her death in 1988—and taught at colleges in Louisiana and Arkansas from 1927 to 1930. From 1930 to 1936 he practiced law in Houston, Texas. Nabrit began teaching law at Howard University in 1936 and served as dean of the law school from 1958 to 1960 and president of the university from 1960 to 1969.
In 1938 he started the first formal civil rights law course in the United States.
Beginning in the 1940s and through the 1950s, Nabrit handled a number of civil rights cases for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Educational Fund, working with prominent attorneys such as Thurgood Marshall, later a Supreme Court justice. Notably, Nabrit argued Bolling v.
Board of Education. Nabrit served as president of Howard University from 1960 to 1965.
From 1965 to 1967 he served as Deputy United States. Ambassador to the United Nations—the first African American hold this position. He returned to the presidency of Howard from 1968 to 1969, stepping down under pressure from the American Association of University Professors after he expelled 18 disruptive students.
Nabrit said that he had simply been waiting for the university to choose a successor. He died in Washington, Doctorate.C, on December 27, 1997, at the age of 97.
Smalls, F. Romall, Kenneth T. Jackson, (editor).
"James Madison Nabrit, Junior." In The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Volume 5. New York: Charles Scribner"s Sons/Gale Group 2002: 413-414
James Nabrit, Junior., Civil Rights Lawyer and Former President of Howard. In Joint European Torus Magazine, Volume
93, Number.
8 (January 19, 1998, page 18).
