William T. Coleman Jr.

William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. was born on July 7, 1920, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Laura Beatrice (Mason) Coleman and William Thaddeus Coleman Sr., who served as director of the Germantown Boys Club for some four decades. He was raised in a household that prized learning and dignity, and grew up amid the everyday indignities of segregation — including the Germantown High School swim team that disbanded rather than admit him.

He excelled brilliantly, earning his degree summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 and graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1946, where he served on the Harvard Law Review. In 1948 he became the first African American to clerk at the United States Supreme Court, serving Justice Felix Frankfurter, and he later became the first Black lawyer named a partner at a major Philadelphia firm.

Recruited by Thurgood Marshall, Coleman was a lead strategist and a co-author of the legal brief in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the landmark ruling that struck down segregation in public schools. He gave decades of service to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, rising to its presidency and later its chairmanship, and argued for civil rights before the nation's highest court.

In 1975 President Gerald Ford named him Secretary of Transportation, making Coleman the second African American to serve in a United States presidential Cabinet; he held the post until 1977. In 1995 President Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. William T. Coleman Jr. died on March 31, 2017, at age 96. We honor a counselor whose quiet brilliance helped bend the law toward justice for all.