Oliver Hill
Oliver White Hill ( born May 1, 1907 in Richmond, Virginia; † August 5, 2007 ) was an American lawyer and civil rights activist, who was mainly known for his struggle against the discrimination blacks in the United States. One of his greatest achievements was the case Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, which was treated together with four other cases to the Supreme Court of the United States in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and led to the desegregation of public schools.
Life
Hill came in May 1907 in Richmond as Oliver White to the world. His father, a pastor, left the family when he was a baby, and when his mother remarried, he was given the surname of his stepfather. Most of his childhood was spent in Roanoke ( Virginia). His mother worked as a maid, his stepfather as a bellhop. Later the family moved to Washington DC, where Hill graduated from Dunbar High School. He then attended Howard University, where he graduated in 1933 as the second best in his class after his friend Thurgood Marshall.
Hill first worked as a lawyer in Roanoke, went in 1939 to Richmond, where he founded his own firm. In 1940 he won together with Thurgood Marshall, William H. Hastie and Leon A. Ranson his first civil rights case, Alston v. School Board of Norfolk, Va., the black teachers earned equality in pay. 1943, Hill to the Army to fight in World War II. So he was a Staff Sergeant on D-Day at Omaha Beach landing action on it.
After the war he returned to his law firm. His next success before the Supreme Court of Virginia was the Erstreitung the equality of black school children during transport to school. In 1948, he became the first black man since Reconstruction to be elected to the city council of Richmond.
Together with his partner Spottswood William Robinson III, he represented the early 1950s, dozens of civil rights cases in Virginia. In the spring of 1951 he took on the case of black students from Farmville (Virginia), in the dilapidated RR Moton High School were taught. This is the case Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, whose application he submitted in court on May 23, 1951 came into being. The unsuccessful by both the State Court and the District Court lawsuit found its way to the Supreme Court, where she was treated together with four other cases. On 17 May 1954, the racial segregation in public schools was abolished. In the next ten years, Hill continued to fight against segregation. 1959 lifted the Virginia Supreme Court on a law of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the integrated schools banned. But it was the case, Green v. School Board of New Kent County in 1968 brought the desired success.
During the 1940s and 1950s Hills life was threatened constantly. He received threatening letters and phone calls so often that he forbade his son to take calls. Also, a cross was burned on the lawn in front of his house, a then common method of the Ku Klux Klan to intimidate opponents and to threaten.
He worked until his retirement in 1998, together with its corporate partners Samuel W. Tucker and Henry L. Marsh III repeatedly with civil rights cases. Two years later he published in 2000 his autobiography, The Big Bang: Brown v. Board of Education. On 5 August 2007, he died at the age of 100 at his home in Richmond.
President Clinton honored him on 11 August 1999 with the awarding of the Medal of Freedom ( "Presidential Medal of Freedom "). In 2005 he received the Spingarn Medal.