Print
Email
Cite
Nabrit, James Madison
1900–1997
American civil rights attorney and university president who became the first African American United States Delegate to the United Nations.James Madison Nabrit was born in Washington, D.C., to the Reverend James Madison and Gertrude Nabrit. He graduated from Morehouse College in 1923 and from Northwestern University Law School in 1927. In 1930 Nabrit moved to Houston, where he worked as a civil rights lawyer. Nabrit joined the faculty of Howard University Law School in 1936, where in 1938 he taught the first formal civil rights course in any law school in the United States. While a teacher and administrator at Howard from 1936 to 1960, Nabrit was involved in numerous civil rights cases including Bolling v. Sharpe, in which he and attorney George E. C. Hayes challenged segregation in the public schools of the District of Columbia. Bolling was ruled upon by the Supreme Court in conjunction with Brown v. Board of Education, wherein the court found segregation to be unconstitutional. In 1960 Nabrit became the president of Howard University, a post he retired from in 1969. He took a leave of absence from 1965 to 1967 to serve on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Nabrit to the second-highest post in the U.S. mission, deputy to the chief delegate.
Bibliography
- Logan, Rayford. Howard University: The First Hundred Years. New York University Press, 1969.
