Background
Atkins was born on March 2, 1939, in Elkhart, Indiana to a Pentecostal minister and a domestic.
General politician student chief master
Atkins was born on March 2, 1939, in Elkhart, Indiana to a Pentecostal minister and a domestic.
Atkins graduated from Indiana in 1961 with a bachelor"s degree in political science. In 1969 he graduated from Harvard Law School.
As a child, he overcame a bout of polio. He was the first black student body president at Elkhart High School. In 1960, he was elected student body president at Indiana University.
He was the school"s first African American student body president as well as the first African American student body president in the Big Ten.
The couple had to marry in Michigan because Indiana prohibited interracial marriage. In 1963 he earned a master"s in Middle Eastern studies from Harvard University.
While at Harvard, Atkins served as executive secretary of Boston"s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People office. Atkins was first elected to the Boston City Council in 1967.
The day following the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Junior., Atkins convinced Mayor Kevin White not to cancel a James Brown concert that was to be held that evening at the Boston Garden and helped negotiate an agreement between White and Brown to have the concert televised by WGBH-television White and Atkins hoped that televising the concert would keep angry and frustrated teenagers at home and prevent the looting and rioting that was occurring in other cities.
The concert has been credited with preventing riots from breaking out in Boston. In 1971, Atkins ran for Mayor of Boston. He finished in fourth place with 11 percent of the vote.
On October 26, 1971, Atkins was appointed Secretary of Communities and Development by Governor Francis West. Sargent.
He was sworn in on November 1, 1971, becoming the first African-American to serve as a state Cabinet Secretary. Atkins served as associate trial counsel for the plaintiffs in Morgan v.
Hennigan. On July 16, 1974, Atkins was named interim president of the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
He was elected to a full two-year term on December 18, 1974. As a Boston"s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People President, Atkins was a central figure during contentious battle over desegregation busing in Boston.
In addition to serving as President of the Boston branch, Atkins was also the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People"s chief desegregation counsel nationally. In this capacity he was the chief counsel in organization"s desegregation lawsuits in Youngstown, Ohio, Columbus, Ohio, San Francisco, Cleveland, and Milwaukee
In 1980, he succeeded Nathaniel R. Jones as general counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1983, Atkins was named executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People by Chairperson Margaret Bush Wilson.
However, the organization"s board of directors sided with suspended executive director Benjamin Hooks and Hooks was reinstated.
Atkins resigned as counsel in 1984 to return to private law practice. They would divorce four years later. Atkins died on June 27, 2008 from complications from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.