Oliver Hill

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Personal Information

Born Oliver White Hill on May 1, 1907, in Richmond, VA; son of Olivia Lewis White-Hill and William Henry White II; married Beresenia Walker, September 5, 1934; children: Oliver White Hill, Jr.
Education: Howard University, AB, 1931; Howard University School of Law, JD, 1933.

Career

Attorney, Roanoke, Virginia, 1934-36; law practice, Richmond, Virginia, 1939-61; elected to Richmond City Council, 1948-50; worked on Davis vs. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia), one of the five cases the Supreme Court combined into their 1954 decision of Brown vs. Board of Education, 1951-54; named to committee on government contract compliance, 1952; FHA, assistant to commissioner, 1961-66; partner and founder, Hill, Tucker & Marsh, 1966-.

Life's Work

Oliver Hill was still a young man when he realized that the most effective way to achieve an equal footing for African Americans was through the legal system. He went to law school and blazed a trail virtually unparalleled in the history of the civil rights movement. In 1948, Hill became the first African American elected to the Richmond City Council since Reconstruction. "Oliver Hill is one of the pioneer civil rights lawyers of our age," Ronald L. Plesser said in 1994. Plesser, the section chair of the Individual Rights and Responsibilities, was announcing Hill's selection as the recipient of that year's Thurgood Marshall award from the American Bar Association. "His lifetime commitment to achieving equal rights through law positively affected the direction of the entire nation at a crucial time in our history."

Born Oliver White Hill in Richmond, Virginia in 1907, Hill had an early fascination with the role of law in society as it related to African Americans. While at Howard University, he and other students realized there was no hope of attaining equal rights through the U.S. Congress. That branch of government clung to the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson, a case that stated that the provision of "separate but equal" facilities for African Americans did not violate the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments, amendments which outlawed slavery after the Civil War.

Attended Law School

The Plessy vs. Ferguson decision led to the creation of Jim Crow laws, which institutionalized racial separation in schools, public facilities and transportation. "So our only hope was to go back through the courts and get the courts to reinterpret and correct the mistake made in 1896," Hill said at a program celebrating the 40th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, and excerpted in Human Rights. "And that is the reason I went to law school." While attending the Howard University School of Law, Hill became friends with a fellow student, Thurgood Marshall, who would become the lead attorney in the Brown case and a future Supreme Court Justice.

Hill began his law practice in 1934 and was one of the few African American lawyers in the South. Many of his cases were race related, and Hill was involved in litigation involving voting rights and equal access to housing and public facilities. In 1947 Hill ran for the Virginia House of Delegates, the lone African American in a field of 18 candidates seeking seven seats. Hill fell 190 votes short. "Had he been nominated and then elected in November," the New York Times reported at the time, "Mr. Hill would have been the first [black] to occupy a seat in the General Assembly since the session of 1889-1890."

Elected to Richmond City Council

The following year Hill sought political office again, this time as a candidate for the Richmond City Council. Hill's quest was successful and he became the first African American to be elected in Richmond in 52 years. Hill placed ninth in a field of 29 candidates for nine vacant seats and finished ahead of some white candidates. In a New York Times editorial, the election was hailed as "a good omen for the South." The article continued, "That the candidate is an educated person and a young man is especially important, for from the age of thirty-one, he can look forward to long years of service to his people and to his community as a whole."

In 1950, Hill lost his bid for reelection to the Richmond City Council and returned to his private law practice. In 1951 another council member resigned to take a job outside of Richmond, and the all-white council had to decide who would replace him. Hill was mentioned as a possible replacement, but his increasingly outspoken views against segregation had sparked opposition within the council and the white community. In a move that angered Richmond's 40,000 African Americans, the council chose a former white council member to fill the vacant seat.

By this time, Hill was actively assisting the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in their lawsuits against the state of Virginia. These lawsuits demanded improved educational facilities for African American children. Hill eventually became the leading attorney in the case of Davis vs. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia), one of five cases that the Supreme Court combined into their 1954 decision of Brown vs. Board of Education. That decision, which overturned Plessy vs. Ferguson, was the culmination of nearly 20 years of hard work.

Involved in Landmark Court Case

"Two or three of us, including Thurgood Marshall, wanted to do something about segregation from the get-go in the 1930s," Hill recalled at the Brown symposium. "We had to educate judges and the white and black public as to what we were trying to do.... We were careful with our cases. We never carried a case to the Supreme Court that we didn't have well documented. Anything weak, we passed aside." The Brown decision, which integrated public schools throughout the United States, was a landmark case that helped to set the civil rights movement in motion. In overturning Plessy vs. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that education was an essential element of modern life and that the doctrine of "separate but equal" was unconstitutional. Hill and his colleagues then went to work implementing the Court's decision, which was a difficult task because the state of Virginia had taken steps to dismantle the public school system rather than desegregate. Hill again took to the courtroom to ensure that the state's public school system would remain intact and become integrated. Forty years later, on the occasion of Hill's acceptance of the Marshall Award, James E. Coleman, Jr. of the American Bar Association remarked, "By using the courts, rather than physical resistance, to fight desegregation, Virginia made civil rights lawyers' work much more difficult....If the state's strategy had succeeded, desegregation would have taken much longer."

Following his efforts to desegregate Virginia's public schools, Hill returned to private practice and established the law firm of Hill, Tucker & Marsh in 1966. He continued to work for civil rights causes throughout his career. In 1994, 40 years after the Brown decision, Hill lamented the state of race relations in America in a Human Rights interview, "I can't understand why Americans are willing to send their children--black and white--to foreign lands to fight, and sometimes die, to preserve the American concepts of freedom, democracy, and civil rights when at the same time these same Americans are unwilling to undergo an occasional inconvenience or suffer a slight financial loss to help break down racial barriers and racial discrimination in this country."

Awards

Selected Awards: Chicago Defender Merit Award, 1948; Howard University Alumni Award, 1950; Omega Man of the Year, Omega Psi Phi, 1957; National Bar Association, Lawyer of the Year, 1959; Judicial Council of National Bar Association, 1979; NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, The Simple Justice Award, 1986; The Justice Thurgood Marshall Award, 1994; Oliver Hill Day in Roanoke, VA, 1995; Oliver Hill Courts Building in Richmond, VA, 1996.

Further Reading

• Human Rights, Spring 1994, p. 12; Summer 1994, p. 6.
• Life, September 27, 1948, p. 47.
• New Republic, April 9, 1951, p. 7.
• New York Times, August 7, 1947, p. 23; June 10, 1948, p. 16; June 12, 1948, p. 14; October 1, 1948, p. 22; June 15, 1950, p. 27; January 11, 1952, p. 13; August 11, 1955, p. 43.

— Brian Escamilla

Oliver W. Hill is an African American attorney who was instrumental in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.

Hill was born May 1, 1907, in Richmond. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Howard University in 1931, then continued at Howard and received his doctor of jurisprudence degree in 1933. The following year, he opened a law practice in Roanoke, Virginia, which he later moved to Richmond. He became active in such organizations as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Urban League as well as the local faction of the Democratic party. Hill served a two-year stint in the military from 1943 to 1945, then returned to private practice.

In August 1947, Hill ran for the Virginia House of Delegates. He lost that election by a mere 190 votes, missing an opportunity to become the first black to occupy a seat in Virginia's general assembly since 1890. He returned to politics the following year, and on June 10, 1948, he was elected to a seat on Richmond's city council. With that victory, he became the first black elected to office in Richmond since Reconstruction.

Hill's election was significant because at least two thousand of the nine thousand voters who backed him were white. Such racial crossover voting was unprecedented at the time, but Hill had made an effort to appeal to voters from both races. He shrewdly realized that many whites, some motivated by moral conviction and others by simple pragmatism, understood that change was imminent in the South. The treatment of black soldiers during World War II had forced harsh scrutiny on a system that was coming to an end. "There is rising in the South a large body of white citizens who recognize the importance of extending constitutional guarantees to Negroes in order to strengthen their own economic and political security," he said.

During his stint on the Richmond council, Hill was voted the second-most-effective member of the nine-member body. But his triumph was short-lived: in 1950, he lost his bid for reelection. Later, he was a popular contender for appointment to a vacancy on the council, but because of his uncompromising position on civil rights, he was denied the appointment. African American leaders in Richmond were angered by the rejection, and much of the racial tension that had characterized Richmond before Hill's 1948 victory was rekindled.

Hill returned to his law practice and joined the ranks of the pioneers in the fight for civil rights. During a career that has spanned six decades, he has been involved in many of the landmark cases that secured constitutional rights for minorities in housing, education, and employment. As a member of the Richmond Democratic Committee, he worked diligently to secure minority voting rights and to encourage involvement in political activity. From 1940 to 1961, Hill served as chairman of the Virginia Legal Commission of the NAACP and participated in such celebrated legal battles as Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954), abolishing segregated public schools, and Quarles v. Philip Morris, 279 F. Supp. 505 (ED. Va.), a 1968 case establishing the right of minorities to equal employment opportunities. In August 1955, because of his participation in Brown, a fiery cross, the symbol of the Ku Klux Klan, was burned on the front lawn of his home.

In 1952, President Harry S. Truman named Hill to the Committee on Government Contract Compliance. This organization was charged with policing the enforcement of federal contract clauses barring racial or religious discrimination in employment. Hill also served, under President John F. Kennedy, as assistant to the commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration. He returned to his law practice after Kennedy's death.

Hill has received numerous awards and recognitions during his long and distinguished career, including the Howard University Alumni Award (1950), National Bar Association Lawyer of the Year Award (1959), Washington Bar Association Charles H. Houston Medallion of Merit (1976), NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Award (1976), NAACP William Ming Advocacy Award (1980), National Council of Christians and Jews Brotherhood Citation (1982), American Bar Association's Thurgood Marshall Award (1993), and Urban League of Richmond Lifetime Achievement Award (1994).

Hill continues to be active in the general practice of law in Richmond and is a partner in the firm of Hill, Tucker, and Marsh. He and his late wife, Beresenia A. Walker Hill, had one son, Oliver W. Hill, Jr., and three grandchildren.

For the architect, see Oliver Hill (architect). For the baseball player, see Oliver Hill (baseball).

Oliver White Hill, Sr.
Oliver Hill oversees the swearing in of the first African American member of the Trial Bureau of the Department of Justice
Born	May 1, 1907(1907-05-01) Richmond, Virginia, United States
Died	August 5, 2007(2007-08-05) (aged 100) Richmond, Virginia, United States
Occupation	Civil rights attorney

Oliver White Hill, Sr. (May 1, 1907 – August 5, 2007) was a civil rights attorney from Richmond, Virginia.^[1][2] His work against racial discrimination helped end the doctrine of "separate but equal." He also helped win landmark legal decisions involving equality in pay for black teachers, access to school buses, voting rights, jury selection, and employment protection. He retired in 1998 after practicing law for almost 60 years. Among his numerous awards is the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Bill Clinton in 1999.

Contents 1 Childhood, education 2 Career 3 Awards and honors 4 References 5 External links

Childhood, education

Hill was born as Oliver White in Richmond, Virginia in 1907. His parents separated while he was still a baby, and he took on his stepfather's last name. The Hill family moved to Roanoke and then to Washington, D.C., where he graduated from Dunbar High School.^[3]

Oliver White Hill earned his undergraduate degree from Howard University and entered Howard University School of Law in 1930. He studied under the tutelage of Charles Hamilton Houston, the chief architect in challenging Jim Crow laws through legal means.^[4] In law school, Hill was a classmate and close friend of future Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall. He graduated second in his class after Marshall in 1933.^[2]

Career

Hill began practicing law in Richmond in 1939. In 1940, working with fellow attorneys Thurgood Marshall, William H. Hastie, and Leon A. Ranson, Hill won his first civil rights case.^[2] The decision in Alston v. School Board of Norfolk, Va., gained pay equity for black teachers. In 1943, Hill joined the United States Army, and served in the European Theatre of World War II.

Returning to his law practice at the end of World War II, he won the right for equal transportation for school children in the Virginia Supreme Court. In 1949, he became the first African American on the City Council of Richmond since Reconstruction in the late 19th century.^[5]

In the early 1950s, Hill was co-counsel with Spottswood W. Robinson III in dozens of civil rights lawsuits around Virginia. In 1951, he took up the cause of the African American students at the segregated R.R. Moton High School in Farmville who had walked out of their dilapidated school. The subsequent lawsuit, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County later became one of the five cases decided under Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954.^[2]

During the 1940s and 1950s, the safety of Hill's life and family were threatened by his work. Due to the barrage of telephoned threats, Hill's young son was not allowed to answer the telephone, and at one point a cross was burned on the Hills' lawn.^[5] However, Hill and his clients continued to wage legal battles. After Brown decision, Virginia under the Byrd Organization followed a policy known as massive resistance to avoid desegregation, enacting a legislative package known as the Stanley plan which included tuition grant support of segregation academies set up to avoid the extant public schools.^[6] In 1959, after public schools had been closed in several localities, notably Prince Edward Public Schools, Norfolk Public Schools and Warren County Public Schools, the Virginia Supreme Court finally ruled Virginia's law prohibiting integrated public schools was unconstitutional. Following that ruling, "Massive Resistance" as an official state policy was abruptly dropped by Virginia Governor James Lindsay Almond, Jr. and the schools in Farmville, Norfolk, and Front Royal were reopened.

However, it was to be more than ten more years before many school districts in Virginia were significantly integrated, following the U.S. Supreme Court decision against freedom of choice plans in the Green v. School Board of New Kent County case of 1968, in which his law partner Samuel W. Tucker was lead counsel, supported by a young lawyer Hill had recruited, Henry L. Marsh, III.

He was long a partner in the Hill, Tucker and Marsh law firm in Richmond and continued civil rights litigation until he retired in 1998.

Awards and honors

Hill's accomplishments have earned many awards and citations including the 1959 Lawyer of the Year Award from the National Bar Association, the 1980 William Robert Ming Advocacy Award from the NAACP,^[7] the Equal Justice Award from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 1986^[8] and the American Bar Association Justice Thurgood Marshall Award in 1993. President of the United States Bill Clinton awarded Hill the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999.^[2][9] Students at the University of Virginia also honored Hill when they founded the Oliver W. Hill Black Pre-Law Association.

In 2000, he received the American Bar Association Medal, and the National Bar Association Hero of the Law award. In September 2000, he and other NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyers were honored with the Harvard Medal of Freedom for their role in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. In 2005 he was awarded the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP's highest honor.^[2] He's also a renowned member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

In Richmond, a bronze bust of him is visible at the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia. The city's Oliver Hill Courts Building was named for him.

Plaque on Virginia Capitol grounds commemorating Oliver Hill's part in the integration Virginia schools

In October 2005, Virginia Governor Mark R. Warner dedicated a newly renovated building in Virginia's Capitol Square in his honor. The Oliver W. Hill Building is the first state-owned building as well as the first in Virginia's Capitol Square to be named for an African American. "Oliver W. Hill has worked tirelessly to end the injustice of segregation, and today we honor his lifetime of contributions to our commonwealth and our nation" said Governor Warner. "It's my hope that the generations of Virginians and Americans who come after us and visit this Square will think that the history we reflect in our monuments is as rich and diverse as our people, and that the heroes that this generation has chosen to honor bring new and vital lessons."

Also in Capitol Square, a Civil Rights Memorial was commissioned and dedicated in July 2008. The memorial, which includes an imnage of Hill, honors the roles Virginians have played in the nation's struggle for civil rights for all.

Oliver Hill's autobiography: The Big Bang: Brown v. Board of Education, The Autobiography of Oliver W. Hill, Sr. edited by Professor Jonathan K. Stubbs, was published in 2000 and reprinted in 2007.

On Sunday, August 5, 2007, Oliver Hill died peacefully during breakfast at his home in Richmond, Virginia of natural causes at the age of 100 years old. Later that day, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine issued a statement, saying:

"As a pioneer for civil rights, an accomplished attorney, and a war veteran, Mr. Hill's dedication to serving the Commonwealth and the country never failed. And, despite all of the accolades and honors he received, Mr. Hill always believed his true legacy was working to challenge the conscience of our Commonwealth and our country." ^[10]

References

1. ^ Ellen Robertson,; Michael Paul Williams anr Lindsay Kastner (August 6, 2007). "Civil Rights Crusader". Richmond Times Dispatch. http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-08-05-0436.html. Retrieved 2007-08-06. ^{[dead link]}
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f} "Oliver White Hill Bio- Oliver W. Hill Sr.". Richmond Times Dispatch. August 6, 2007. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. http://web.archive.org/web/20070927003527/http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news/oliverhill.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-08-06-0119.html. Retrieved 2007-08-06. 
3. ^ Bernstein, Adam (August 6, 2007). "Oliver W. Hill, 1907-2007". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/05/AR2007080500734.html. Retrieved 2007-08-09. 
4. ^ Hill, Sr., Oliver W. (2007). The Big Bang: Brown v. Board of Education and Beyond. GrantHouse Publishers. p. ix. ISBN 978-1-885066-62-6. 
5. ^ ^{a b} "The HistoryMakers-Oliver Hill Biography". http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=689&category=lawMakers. Retrieved 2007-08-08. 
6. ^ Glasrud, Bruce; Ely, James W. (May 1977). "The Crisis of Conservative Virginia: The Byrd Organization and the Politics of Massive Resistance (book review)". The Journal of Southern History (The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 43, No. 2) 43 (2): 324–325. doi:10.2307/2207385. JSTOR 2207385. 
7. ^ "NAACP Legal Department Awards". NAACP. http://naacp.com/legal/awards/index.htm. Retrieved 2010-07-04. 
8. ^ "Oliver Hill Timeline". NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. http://thedefendersonline.org/oliver-hill-timeline/. Retrieved 2009-10-22. 
9. ^ Robert C. Scott (May 1, 2007). "A Tribute to Oliver White Hill In the U.S. House of Representatives May 1, 2007". http://www.house.gov/list/hearing/va03_scott/fr_070501.html. Retrieved 2007-08-11. 
10. ^ Official Site of the Governor of Virginia - Tim Kaine

External links

• Virginia Historical Society; Oliver Hill webpage
• Howard University School of Law, Brown at 50 bios, Oliver Hill webpage
• Civil Rights Lawyer Oliver Hill Dies at 100
• "Oliver Hill statue pictures to be unveiled 2008 Richmond Virginia" website
• "The Ground Beneath Our Feet" website
• and timeline
• VA Historical Society
• History of busing in Richmond
• Library of Virginia
• "They Closed Our Schools," the story of Massive Resistance and the closing of the Prince Edward County, Virginia public schools
• Bond, Julian, Interview with Oliver W. Hill, Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2004.
• Oliver Hill's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project
• Oliver Hill 2002 oral history video from the Voices of Freedom Collection of the VCU Libraries

Persondata
Name	Hill, Oliver
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1907-05-01
Place of birth	Richmond, Virginia, United States
Date of death	2007-08-05
Place of death	Richmond, Virginia, United States

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