Washington and Lee University School of Law Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons Scholarly Articles Faculty Scholarship 2008 William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr.: Breaking the Color Barrier at the U.S. Supreme Court Todd C. Peppers Washington and Lee University School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlufac Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Courts Commons, Judges Commons, Law and Race Commons, Legal History Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Recommended Citation Todd C. Peppers, William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr.: Breaking the Color Barrier at the U.S. Supreme Court, 33 J. Sup. Ct. Hist. 353 (2008). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scholarly Articles by an authorized administrator of Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr.: Breaking the Color Barrier at the U.S. Supreme Court TODD C. PEPPERS Introduction On April 15, 2007, baseball fans celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers—an event that broke the color barrier and integrated major league baseball. In stadiums across America, professional baseball teams honored the memory and ac- complishments of Robinson, as managers and players donned Robinson’s retired jersey number, Hall of Famers threw out ceremonial first pitches, and tributes boomed from video displays. The tributes to Robinson, however, like his legacy, went far beyond the ballparks, as newspaper and television journalists debated Robinson’s role as a civil-rights pioneer while lamenting the dwindling number of minorities playing baseball and elementary school children read stories of Robinson’s stirring feats. On September 1, 2008, the U.S. Supreme first black lawyer in both major Philadelphia Court perhaps should celebrate a similar an- and New Yorklaw firms, volunteering his time niversary: the sixtieth anniversary of the arrival and expertise for the desegregation cases col- of the first black law clerk at the Court. His lectively referred to as Brown v. Board of Ed- name is William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr.,1 and ucation, being president and then chairman on September 1, 1948, Coleman began clerk- of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educa- ing in the Chambers of Associate Supreme tional Fund of the National Association for the Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. A graduate Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), of Harvard Law School, Coleman used his serving as the Secretary of Transportation Supreme Court clerkship as a stepping stone in the Ford administration, and receiving the to a remarkable legal and political career, Presidential Medal of Freedom from President highlights of which include working as the Clinton. 354 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY The purpose of this essay is twofold: It States Constitution. William Coleman, Jr.’s will endeavor to succinctly summarize the im- maternal great-great-grandfather was an Epis- portant events of Coleman’s life and profes- copal minister who operated the underground sional career, while making the argument that railroad in St. Louis, Missouri. these achievements were as groundbreaking Coleman’s mother was a former German in the legal community as Robinson’s were teacher who also greatly influenced her son. to baseball. Admittedly, looking to our na- “My mother always said what would redeem tional pastime is hardly an original literary ma- her living in a world where blacks and women neuver; The myriad similarities and links be- were second place [was] that when she got to tween baseball and the law have offered rich heaven, God would be a black woman.”3 One material for many legal writers.2 Moreover, pattern of Coleman’s childhood was exposure this article does not wish to diminish Cole- to “a great many worldly people,” including man’s accomplishments by comparing them to civil rights pioneer W.E.B. DuBois—a friend a mere “game.” By drawing upon the sixtieth of Coleman’s maternal aunt who occasionally anniversary of Robinson’s debut, my hope is joined the Coleman family for dinner—and to give Coleman his due and place his laud- poet Langston Hughes. As a result of this ex- able achievements in the proper perspective. posure to the world, “I knew we were as good Not only did the two men do much to dispel as anybody. I never felt inferior.”4 the pernicious stereotype that they belonged The lessons learned around the dinner ta- to a race that was doomed to second-class cit- ble proved to be important as Coleman began izenship, but their efforts to integrate their re- moving into a segregated world that did not spective professions and to use their talents to push young black students to fulfill their po- effect change reverberated throughout society. tential. Recalling his time at Theodore Roo- sevelt Junior High School, Coleman recounted the following incident. The Early Life of William T. Coleman, Jr. I finished tops in my class at Roo- William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr. was born on sevelt. I made what I thought was July 7, 1920, in Germantown, Pennsylvania to a good speech and my teacher said, parents William Thaddeus Coleman, Sr. and “Yo u ’ll make somebody a good Laura Beatrice Coleman. One of three chil- chauffeur.” Iwon’t tell you what I told dren, Coleman grew up in a middle-class home her, but I was suspended for saying it. where education and hard work were encour- My mother and father had to tell her, aged. Social activism and public service were “You don’t talk to a Coleman kid that practices engrained into Coleman’s family. His way.”5 father was a graduate of the Hampton Insti- tute who balanced his work as the executive Coleman subsequently enrolled in the predom- director of the Wissahickon Boys Club—an inately white Germantown High School, where organization originally founded to provided he was one of fewer than ten black students. educational and recreational opportunities for An outstanding student, he was nevertheless minorities and poor whites—with his duties as suspended when he demanded to become a a field secretary for the Boys Club of America member of the all-white swim team. When and as a director of a local summer camp. Coleman’s suspension was lifted, the swim- William Coleman, Sr. was given the mid- ming team disbanded rather than be forced to dle name “Thaddeus” in honor of Thaddeus integrate and accept Coleman. Remarks Cole- Stevens, a Pennsylvania lawyer and congress- man: “The day I graduated, they posted a note man who tirelessly worked for the ratification saying they were starting up the swimming of the Fourteenth Amendmend to the United team again. But the coach wrote me the best WILLIAM THADDEUS COLEMAN, JR. 355 recommendation [letter] for the University of hard work paid off in the spring of 1941, when Pennsylvania.”6 When asked why he decided his high grades (he was second in his first- to become an attorney, Coleman pointed to his year class) propelled him onto the staff of the experiences of sitting in Philadelphia court- Harvard Law Review. He was only the third rooms as an adolescent and being impressed black man to serve on the Law Review, fol- that the lawyers got “paid to argue,” as well as lowing in the footsteps of previous graduates a visit as a high-school student to an operat- Charles Hamilton Houston and William Henry ing ward at a local hospital, where he watched Hastie. While Coleman does not recall feeling a stomach cancer operation and quickly de- any trepidation from being one of the first mi- cided “that wasn’t for me.”7 It was as a teenager norities to serve on the Law Review, he surely, that Coleman learned of the efforts of attorney like his predecessors, felt the historic weight Charles Hamilton Houston and the NAACP to of his selection and the consequences if he attack and defeat segregation, a fight that ap- stumbled. Only twenty years earlier, Houston pealed to Coleman’s own sense of justice and wrote his parents: “The editors on the Review equality. didn’t want me on this fall; now all is one Coleman enrolled at the University of grand harmony. But I still go on my way alone. Pennsylvania, originally majoring only in po- They know I am just as independent and a lit- litical science but adding an economics major tle more so than they. My stock is pretty high after a lawyer told his father that economics around these parts. God help me against a false was a good field of study for future lawyers. move.”11 And when Hastie, a cousin of Charles Coleman describes his time at the University Houston, became the second black selected to of Pennsylvania as “‘sort of a blur,’” adding the Law Review, in 1928, the editor-in-chief “‘[w]e studied, and we were all glad when declined to invite Hastie to the traditional din- Friday came. If we didn’t have a theme due ner held to welcome the new members—a de- by ten o’clock Monday morning, we loved to cision that was reversed when then–Harvard spend the weekend taking the ladies out.’”8 He graduated summa cum laude from the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania in 1941. Coleman arrived at Harvard Law School in the fall of 1941, one of only four minority law students in the first-year class.9 Although Harvard Law School had admitted its first black law student—George Lewis Ruffin— shortly after the Civil War, minority students had a minimal presence there in the following decades.