Norton Recognizes Civil Rights Lawyer Oliver Hill Raised and Educated in D.C. (8/7/07)

Washington, DC- Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today released a statement praising the life of Oliver Hill, the civil rights pioneer best known for arguing one of the five Brown school desegregation Supreme Court cases, who died Sunday at the age of 100. Hill was raised in the District of Columbia, and like Norton, graduated from Dunbar High School. She said that Hill "took down segregation barriers the hard way-one by one...and repeatedly risked his life to help bring the rule of law to Virginia and to our country." The Congresswoman's statement follows.

"With the passing of the civil rights legal pioneer, Oliver Hill, we in the District join the people of Virginia in commemorating the life of the last of the greatest generation of civil rights lawyers. Hill lavished the gifts of his legal talents on equal rights in Virginia, where he was born, but the District, where Hill was raised, also claims this graduate of Dunbar High School, and graduate of Howard University and of its Law School, which prepared him for the extraordinary contributions he was to make to his country. Prodigiously filing civil rights cases - more than in any other southern state - Hill and his partners took down segregation barriers the hard way - one by one, making the transportation, facilities and pay of Black students and teachers equal to those of their peers, and then, with other NAACP lawyers, using these victories to strike down the lion of separate but equal itself, altogether. His Virginia case, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, was one of the five Brown school desegregation cases decided in 1954 by the Supreme Court, as was Bolling v. Sharpe, the District of Columbia case. Hill repeatedly risked his life to help bring the rule of law to Virginia and to our country. When he died this week, after living a century, Oliver Hill had not only helped vanquish segregation. He had lived to see the fruits of his efforts."