Wiley Branton

Wiley Austin Branton Sr. was born on December 13, 1923, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, into a Black middle-class family. His father, Leo Andrew Branton, and his grandfather built and ran the family taxicab business in Pine Bluff, and his mother was Pauline, of the Wiley family whose name he carried. He came of age in the segregated schools of Jefferson County before serving in the United States Army during the Second World War.

Branton earned a degree from Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College and then studied law at the University of Arkansas, graduating in 1953 as one of the first Black students to earn a law degree there. In 1956 he agreed to represent the Black students and families seeking to integrate Little Rock's Central High School. His suit, Aaron v. Cooper, drew in the national NAACP and Thurgood Marshall and reached the Supreme Court in 1958 as Cooper v. Aaron — a landmark affirming that states could not defy school desegregation.

He carried that fight across the South as executive director of the Voter Education Project from 1962 to 1965, work that helped register hundreds of thousands of Black voters. He went on to serve in the federal government, including at the Department of Justice, and led civil-rights and anti-poverty organizations in Washington, D.C.

From 1978 to 1983 he served as dean of the Howard University School of Law, tending the institution that had trained generations of civil-rights lawyers. He died on December 15, 1988. May the courage and dignity of Wiley Branton, who opened schoolhouse doors and ballot boxes for a people, be honored and remembered.