James Nabrit Jr.

James Madison Nabrit Jr. was born on September 7, 1900, in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of James Nabrit Sr., a Black Baptist minister who also worked as a baker and later served as president of the American Baptist Theological Institute in Nashville and secretary of the National Baptist Convention. Raised in a household of faith and learning, the younger Nabrit carried both callings into a lifetime of service.

He graduated from Morehouse College in 1923 and earned his law degree at Northwestern University in 1927, distinguishing himself among his class. In 1936 he joined the faculty of Howard University School of Law, where in 1938 he created and taught the first formal civil rights law course offered at any American law school — planting the seed of a legal tradition that would reshape the nation.

Working alongside Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Nabrit argued Bolling v. Sharpe, the companion case to Brown v. Board of Education that struck down school segregation in the District of Columbia. He served as dean of Howard's law school from 1958 to 1960 and as president of Howard University from 1960 to 1969, guiding the institution through a pivotal era.

In 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, a post he held until 1967 — the first African American to hold that office. Scholar, advocate, and statesman, James Nabrit Jr. gave the law itself to the cause of freedom, and the nation is more just for his labor.