Law Archives - Page 3 of 16

Lena Olive Smith

Lena Olive Smith was a prominent civil rights lawyer and activist during the 1920s and 1930s.

Best known for initiating the effort to free an enslaved woman named Eliza Winston in 1860, she weathered mob violence for her efforts. She rebuilt her home and business after the incident and lived in Minneapolis for the remainder of her life.

Toki Wakayama

The Wakayama case was a wartime test case that challenged the detention of Japanese Americans forcibly removed from the West Coast.

Sue Shelton White

Suffragist, lawyer, leader of the National Woman’s Party in Tennessee

Irene Morgan

On July 16, 1944, Irene Morgan refused to surrender her seat to white passengers and move to the back of a Greyhound bus while traveling from Gloucester County, Virginia, to Baltimore, Maryland. She was arrested and convicted in the Virginia courts for violating a state statute requiring racial segregation on all public vehicles. The NAACP appealed her case to the Supreme Court. On June 3, 1946, by a 6-to-1 decision, the Court ruled that the Virginia statute was unconstitutional when applied to interstate passengers on interstate motor vehicles because it put an undue burden on interstate commerce.

Juanita Jackson Mitchell

The NAACP’s first national youth director

Margaret Bush Wilson

In 1958 she became president of the NAACP St. Louis Branch, and in 1962 headed the State Conference. Elected to the NAACP Board in 1963, she became the first black woman to chair it in 1975.