Jurist and civil rights advocate honored as part of Black History Month
WASHINGTON, DC-U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) honored the lifetime achievement of the late Judge A. Leon Higginbotham with a floor speech, a resolution, a symposium and a reception. The Senate passed a resolution by Senator Casey honoring Judge Higginbotham cosponsored by Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT).
At the symposium, guests heard from the Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree, Barbara R. Arnwine and Morey M. Myers, and the event was moderated by Christopher A. Lewis. The panel discussed the lasting impact of Leon Higginbotham’s legacy in pursuing racial equality for all people. The conversation focused on the future, emphasizing that the flame of Leon Higginbotham must continue to burn for generations to come.
At the conclusion of the symposium, Senator Casey made a presentation to Leon’s widow, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and announced the A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. summer internship in his Washington, D.C. office. The summer internship will be paid and will be for a student from Pennsylvania with a disadvantaged background wanting to pursue a career in law.
Leon Higginbotham Jr. was an American lawyer, jurist and scholar. He spent 30 years as a federal judge, serving on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where he was the Chief Judge. He was also a noted historian who published numerous books and articles on the subject of race and equal opportunity in the United States. Higginbotham served as an international mediator during South Africa's 1994 elections and as counsel for the Congressional Black Caucus in a series of voting rights cases before the United States Supreme Court. Higginbotham was also the president of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Public Service Professor of Jurisprudence at Harvard University and Commissioner of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He died in 1998.
Senator Casey’s prepared remarks:
Mr. President: I rise today in support of a resolution honoring the lifetime achievements of Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, as well as my colleague from Pennsylvania and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Specter, join me as original cosponsors of this resolution. We re honored to pay tribute to a remarkable lawyer, jurist, scholar and advocate whose story inspires us.
The Bible says, “There were giants in the earth in those days.” Leon Higginbotham was a giant. He stood 6'6" tall and towered above most of the rest of us in his intellect, his compassion and his commitment to equality. Today, those who knew him and worked with him, and those who, like me, admired him from afar, have gathered in our nation's capital to honor his life and his legacy.
Aloysius Leon Higginbotham was born 80 years ago this month. The United States was about to enter the Great Depression and many Americans suffered under the yoke of racism and institutional, legalized segregation. Leon’s young mother, who left school in the seventh grade, and his father, who worked in a Trenton, New Jersey factory, faced a world where most avenues to success were closed to African Americans.
Young Leon Higginbotham grew up in a household that valued hard work and education, yet the African American community had few resources to support good schooling. “Separate but equal” grade schools offered a limited curriculum, small schoolhouses and often one teacher for multiple grades. This left black students effectively unable to gain admission to the nearby white high schools. In fact, in the four decades preceding Leon's entrance into junior high, no black student from his school in Ewing Township, New Jersey had ever enrolled in a white high school. Without the required prerequisites, especially training in Latin, the doors to academic success were nailed shut.
Fortunately, Leon's parents believed those doors could be pried open. His mother, Emma Lee, who worked for a wealthy family, constantly told her son that education was the “sole passport to a better life.” In a bold, unprecedented move, she negotiated Leon's entrance into one of the best high schools in Trenton. Despite having no foundation in Latin, Leon managed to pass his freshman course. Impressed by his intellectual ability, Leon's Latin teacher offered to tutor him over the summer. Between jobs as a busboy in a local hotel and as a laborer in factories, he rode his bicycle nearly 20 miles to his teacher's home, several times a week, to improve his Latin skills. Mirroring his father's work ethic and his mother's passion for learning, Leon overcame the odds and earned his high school diploma.
In 1944, at age 16, Leon enrolled in the engineering program at Purdue University, where the student body had 6000 white students and 12 black students. Leon and his 11 fellow students were required to live in the unheated attic of a campus building. As autumn became winter, snow found its way through the flimsy roof, and the 12 students shivered their nights away, wearing ear muffs, shoes and multiple layers of clothing to bed. As the Midwestern winter grew colder, Leon requested a meeting with the university president to negotiate for a warmer place to sleep, noting that all of the white students slept in heated dormitories. The president responded, “Higginbotham, the law doesn't require us to let colored students in the dorm. We will never do it, and you either accept things as they are or leave the university immediately.” Leon found the president's comments especially troubling in light of the thousands of African-Americans who were then serving their nation in World War II. He left the president's office determined to find a way both to serve his country and bring about lasting change.
Leon continued his academic pursuits at Purdue and became an avid debater, qualifying to attend the Big Ten debate championships. After being forced to sleep in a YMCA overrun with mice, while his white teammates were lodged in a comfortable hotel, Leon finally decided to leave Purdue and enroll in Antioch College. His strong academic performance at Antioch persuaded members of the faculty and the board of trustees to encourage him to enroll in law school. Leon received an offer of assistance from a benefactor which would cover his first semester at Yale Law School, but Rutgers University offered him a full scholarship. Characteristically, Leon resisted pressure from friends and family and chose the steeper path, Yale.
He arrived at Yale with a cardboard suitcase and little understanding of the challenges that lay ahead. He was overwhelmed at first by the education and polish of his fellow students, many of them sons or relatives of lawyers, judges or prominent politicians. As he recalled, “my father was a laborer, two books in the house. One, we had purchased, a Bible; the other, my mother had gotten out of the trash of one of the people she worked for, an old dictionary…. I did not begin Yale at the same starting line as many of my contemporaries.”
Leon balanced his time between working at a corner store in New Haven and wrestling diligently with the law. As a research assistant to Professor John P. Frank, Leon demonstrated “an extraordinary verbal talent” and achieved what Dean Wesley Sturges described as more honors in oral advocacy than anyone else in the law school at the time. Leon later said that the most significant event in his law school career was traveling to Washington, D.C., to witness Thurgood Marshall's passionate advocacy before the Supreme Court in the Sweatt v. Painter case. From that moment on, Leon committed his considerable talents to the fight for what he called the “promise of freedom” for all people. The child who rode his bicycle to Latin lessons graduated from Yale Law School as the towering man with the deep baritone voice, who would succeed in a world almost unimaginable to his parents.
Leon decided to begin his legal career in Philadelphia. This was not an easy task in the Philadelphia of the early 1950s, but a few people recognized his potential and helped him become a clerk for Judge Curtis Bok of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. He worked hard and soon became the youngest-- and first ever African-American assistant district attorney-- under Richardson Dilworth, who later serves as Mayor of Philadelphia. After two years in the DA’s office, Leon left to found, with another future federal judge, Clifford Scott Green, and others, Philadelphia's first African-American law firm, Norris, Schmidt, Green, Harris & Higginbotham. The Norris firm became the launching pad for a generation of successful African-American lawyers. At the same time, he pushed for social change in various roles, including President of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP, Special Hearing Officer for the United States Department of Justice, Commissioner of the Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission, and Special Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania. While juggling these public commitments, Leon always maintained close ties to the community as a director of numerous legal, political and nonprofit organizations.
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy appointed Leon to the Federal Trade Commission, making him the first African-American ever to serve on a federal regulatory commission. Soon thereafter, Kennedy recognized Leon's work as a lawyer and public servant and nominated him for a federal judgeship in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. However, his confirmation faced strong resistance and repeated delays engineered by some members of the United States Senate. After President Kennedy's death, President Lyndon B. Johnson overrode the resistance to Leon's nomination by giving him a recess appointment to the Eastern District Court. At the age of 35, Judge Leon Higginbotham became one of the youngest men ever appointed to the federal bench.
From the beginning of his career on the bench, Judge Higginbotham was known for his scholarly, well-written opinions and his imperturbable judicial temperament. His tenure was also marked by his focus on the generations to follow him, what many came to call his “people legacy.” His warmth extended particularly to those on what he referred to as “the lower end of the Courthouse bureaucracy.” The Judge permitted young clerks and staffers to accompany him in all his activities so they could learn the full nature of the legal profession. Students from Philadelphia public high schools could be found working as interns in his office. He soon developed a diverse entourage that became known as the “Higginbotham menagerie.” Many of his protégés moved on to lead outstanding careers in the public arena. In fact, one of our congressional colleagues, Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia, served as his first law clerk and is a living symbol of Judge Higginbotham's legacy.
In 1968, in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, despair and violence escalated across our country. President Johnson repeatedly called on Judge Higginbotham for advice on how to restore hope and optimism in the hearts of the American people. Johnson recognized Judge Higginbotham's wisdom in the face of crisis and appointed him to the Commission on Causes and Prevention of Violence. Judge Higginbotham used that opportunity to push for ways to quell the violence of the time and to shrink the divide between black and white America. The Judge also exerted his influence beyond racial issues and advocated for women's rights. As a trustee of the Yale Corporation, he successfully fought to allow undergraduate enrollment for women at Yale College.
In 1977, Judge Higginbotham's accomplishments, both on the bench and in civic matters, led President Jimmy Carter to appoint him to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Higginbotham sat on the Third Circuit for 16 years, served as chief judge from 1989 to 1991, and as senior judge through the completion of his judicial career in 1993. He described his judicial philosophy as “evolutionary in terms of what is fair and just in a society.” Through his rulings and subsequent writing, he reminded us that when our country was founded, the hope and promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were tarnished by the fact that the United States had over 500,000 slaves. Judge Higginbotham believed that equality for all under the law requires progressive interpretation of our founding documents and continued focus on the inequities that still exist. As he put it, “… it is possible that with the obvious pride we have in the few who make it, that we may fail to recognize how long the road behind us is and how many there are on that road who still are deprived by history of the utilization of their talents…. We cannot become anesthetized by the success of a few and oblivious to the deprivation of the many.”
In 1993, Judge Higginbotham retired from the bench and began a new phase of his quest to achieve racial equality under the law. Even after three decades of remarkable public service, Judge Higginbotham took no time to rest, often quoting Robert Frost's words, “ I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep.” He focused his post-judicial life on the future, often asking who in the next generation would “carry the baton into the new millennium.” As a professor at Harvard University, he poured his energy and passion into preparing tomorrow's leaders to take that baton. He taught numerous courses and many of his students recall his oft-repeated words: “if you do not stand up for something, you'll fall for anything.”
Judge Higginbotham's work as a scholar and historian helped transform our nation's perception of race in America. His thorough research of nearly 250 years of legal documents involving racial issues formed the basis for a flood of books and articles in which he dissected the many aspects of discrimination embedded in America's legal system. For example, he hosted a conference on the centennial of Plessy v. Ferguson, using the occasion to urge the young minds of the next generation to take full advantage of the hard-won opportunities created by Brown v. Board of Education. He once commented to a group of recent law school graduates, “What should be our theme to America?... It is that in the long, bloody and terrible history of race in America, there is no more time for foolishness.” His words and his actions still compel each of us to face the ugly parts of our nation's history as well as the glorious ones, and to respond, with commitment, to the public arena.
Many remember Judge Higginbotham as what we now call a multi-tasker, especially during his retirement. When he wasn't teaching, he was frequently in a car on the way to the airport, dictating one of the over 100 speeches he delivered each year. When not addressing audiences, he often could be found testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, attending monthly meetings of the United States Commission on Human Rights, serving on numerous boards of trustees, including the New York Times and National Geographic, or arguing voting rights cases on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus before the Supreme Court. He extended his fervor for equal justice overseas as a consultant to President Nelson Mandela on the formation of the South African constitution and as an advocate for democracy education in South Africa.
Not surprisingly, Judge Higginbotham was recognized with numerous awards for his leadership as jurist, historian, scholar, advocate, mentor and ordinary citizen. His many honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award, the NAACP Spingarn Medal, the ACLU Medal, the National Human Relations Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Philadelphia Bar Association, the Outstanding Young Man Award from the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, and honorary degrees from over 60 universities.
Judge Higginbotham is remembered by many, including me, as a true American hero: a giant among men, who began his life in the most modest of circumstances, yet rose to extraordinary heights. Rosa Parks, another American whose own story continues to inspire us, appropriately noted after his passing, “I think he really had a great idea that we are all equal people.” Rosa Parks’ words capture what I believe to be the essence of Judge Higginbotham's legacy: he helped pry open the doors leading to the American dream for ordinary people from all walks of life.
So in this month when we celebrate the achievements of African Americans, I am honored to pay tribute to Leon Higginbotham’s life of courage and commitment to justice; of integrity and intellect; his life of advocacy and action, service and scholarship. Judge Higginbotham’s life was a testament to the enduring power of the words “we shall overcome.” Leon Higginbotham helped our nation move closer to the ideal expressed on the building across the street from this chamber: “Equal Justice under Law.” We’re proud to have his wife, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, as well as numerous family members, friends, former clerks and colleagues here with us today as we honor his life and work and seek to keep the flame of Leon Higginbotham burning ever brightly.
At the symposium, guests heard from the Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree, Barbara R. Arnwine and Morey M. Myers, and the event was moderated by Christopher A. Lewis. The panel discussed the lasting impact of Leon Higginbotham’s legacy in pursuing racial equality for all people. The conversation focused on the future, emphasizing that the flame of Leon Higginbotham must continue to burn for generations to come.
At the conclusion of the symposium, Senator Casey made a presentation to Leon’s widow, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and announced the A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. summer internship in his Washington, D.C. office. The summer internship will be paid and will be for a student from Pennsylvania with a disadvantaged background wanting to pursue a career in law.
Leon Higginbotham Jr. was an American lawyer, jurist and scholar. He spent 30 years as a federal judge, serving on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where he was the Chief Judge. He was also a noted historian who published numerous books and articles on the subject of race and equal opportunity in the United States. Higginbotham served as an international mediator during South Africa's 1994 elections and as counsel for the Congressional Black Caucus in a series of voting rights cases before the United States Supreme Court. Higginbotham was also the president of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Public Service Professor of Jurisprudence at Harvard University and Commissioner of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He died in 1998.
Senator Casey’s prepared remarks:
Mr. President: I rise today in support of a resolution honoring the lifetime achievements of Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, as well as my colleague from Pennsylvania and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Specter, join me as original cosponsors of this resolution. We re honored to pay tribute to a remarkable lawyer, jurist, scholar and advocate whose story inspires us.
The Bible says, “There were giants in the earth in those days.” Leon Higginbotham was a giant. He stood 6'6" tall and towered above most of the rest of us in his intellect, his compassion and his commitment to equality. Today, those who knew him and worked with him, and those who, like me, admired him from afar, have gathered in our nation's capital to honor his life and his legacy.
Aloysius Leon Higginbotham was born 80 years ago this month. The United States was about to enter the Great Depression and many Americans suffered under the yoke of racism and institutional, legalized segregation. Leon’s young mother, who left school in the seventh grade, and his father, who worked in a Trenton, New Jersey factory, faced a world where most avenues to success were closed to African Americans.
Young Leon Higginbotham grew up in a household that valued hard work and education, yet the African American community had few resources to support good schooling. “Separate but equal” grade schools offered a limited curriculum, small schoolhouses and often one teacher for multiple grades. This left black students effectively unable to gain admission to the nearby white high schools. In fact, in the four decades preceding Leon's entrance into junior high, no black student from his school in Ewing Township, New Jersey had ever enrolled in a white high school. Without the required prerequisites, especially training in Latin, the doors to academic success were nailed shut.
Fortunately, Leon's parents believed those doors could be pried open. His mother, Emma Lee, who worked for a wealthy family, constantly told her son that education was the “sole passport to a better life.” In a bold, unprecedented move, she negotiated Leon's entrance into one of the best high schools in Trenton. Despite having no foundation in Latin, Leon managed to pass his freshman course. Impressed by his intellectual ability, Leon's Latin teacher offered to tutor him over the summer. Between jobs as a busboy in a local hotel and as a laborer in factories, he rode his bicycle nearly 20 miles to his teacher's home, several times a week, to improve his Latin skills. Mirroring his father's work ethic and his mother's passion for learning, Leon overcame the odds and earned his high school diploma.
In 1944, at age 16, Leon enrolled in the engineering program at Purdue University, where the student body had 6000 white students and 12 black students. Leon and his 11 fellow students were required to live in the unheated attic of a campus building. As autumn became winter, snow found its way through the flimsy roof, and the 12 students shivered their nights away, wearing ear muffs, shoes and multiple layers of clothing to bed. As the Midwestern winter grew colder, Leon requested a meeting with the university president to negotiate for a warmer place to sleep, noting that all of the white students slept in heated dormitories. The president responded, “Higginbotham, the law doesn't require us to let colored students in the dorm. We will never do it, and you either accept things as they are or leave the university immediately.” Leon found the president's comments especially troubling in light of the thousands of African-Americans who were then serving their nation in World War II. He left the president's office determined to find a way both to serve his country and bring about lasting change.
Leon continued his academic pursuits at Purdue and became an avid debater, qualifying to attend the Big Ten debate championships. After being forced to sleep in a YMCA overrun with mice, while his white teammates were lodged in a comfortable hotel, Leon finally decided to leave Purdue and enroll in Antioch College. His strong academic performance at Antioch persuaded members of the faculty and the board of trustees to encourage him to enroll in law school. Leon received an offer of assistance from a benefactor which would cover his first semester at Yale Law School, but Rutgers University offered him a full scholarship. Characteristically, Leon resisted pressure from friends and family and chose the steeper path, Yale.
He arrived at Yale with a cardboard suitcase and little understanding of the challenges that lay ahead. He was overwhelmed at first by the education and polish of his fellow students, many of them sons or relatives of lawyers, judges or prominent politicians. As he recalled, “my father was a laborer, two books in the house. One, we had purchased, a Bible; the other, my mother had gotten out of the trash of one of the people she worked for, an old dictionary…. I did not begin Yale at the same starting line as many of my contemporaries.”
Leon balanced his time between working at a corner store in New Haven and wrestling diligently with the law. As a research assistant to Professor John P. Frank, Leon demonstrated “an extraordinary verbal talent” and achieved what Dean Wesley Sturges described as more honors in oral advocacy than anyone else in the law school at the time. Leon later said that the most significant event in his law school career was traveling to Washington, D.C., to witness Thurgood Marshall's passionate advocacy before the Supreme Court in the Sweatt v. Painter case. From that moment on, Leon committed his considerable talents to the fight for what he called the “promise of freedom” for all people. The child who rode his bicycle to Latin lessons graduated from Yale Law School as the towering man with the deep baritone voice, who would succeed in a world almost unimaginable to his parents.
Leon decided to begin his legal career in Philadelphia. This was not an easy task in the Philadelphia of the early 1950s, but a few people recognized his potential and helped him become a clerk for Judge Curtis Bok of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. He worked hard and soon became the youngest-- and first ever African-American assistant district attorney-- under Richardson Dilworth, who later serves as Mayor of Philadelphia. After two years in the DA’s office, Leon left to found, with another future federal judge, Clifford Scott Green, and others, Philadelphia's first African-American law firm, Norris, Schmidt, Green, Harris & Higginbotham. The Norris firm became the launching pad for a generation of successful African-American lawyers. At the same time, he pushed for social change in various roles, including President of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP, Special Hearing Officer for the United States Department of Justice, Commissioner of the Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission, and Special Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania. While juggling these public commitments, Leon always maintained close ties to the community as a director of numerous legal, political and nonprofit organizations.
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy appointed Leon to the Federal Trade Commission, making him the first African-American ever to serve on a federal regulatory commission. Soon thereafter, Kennedy recognized Leon's work as a lawyer and public servant and nominated him for a federal judgeship in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. However, his confirmation faced strong resistance and repeated delays engineered by some members of the United States Senate. After President Kennedy's death, President Lyndon B. Johnson overrode the resistance to Leon's nomination by giving him a recess appointment to the Eastern District Court. At the age of 35, Judge Leon Higginbotham became one of the youngest men ever appointed to the federal bench.
From the beginning of his career on the bench, Judge Higginbotham was known for his scholarly, well-written opinions and his imperturbable judicial temperament. His tenure was also marked by his focus on the generations to follow him, what many came to call his “people legacy.” His warmth extended particularly to those on what he referred to as “the lower end of the Courthouse bureaucracy.” The Judge permitted young clerks and staffers to accompany him in all his activities so they could learn the full nature of the legal profession. Students from Philadelphia public high schools could be found working as interns in his office. He soon developed a diverse entourage that became known as the “Higginbotham menagerie.” Many of his protégés moved on to lead outstanding careers in the public arena. In fact, one of our congressional colleagues, Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia, served as his first law clerk and is a living symbol of Judge Higginbotham's legacy.
In 1968, in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, despair and violence escalated across our country. President Johnson repeatedly called on Judge Higginbotham for advice on how to restore hope and optimism in the hearts of the American people. Johnson recognized Judge Higginbotham's wisdom in the face of crisis and appointed him to the Commission on Causes and Prevention of Violence. Judge Higginbotham used that opportunity to push for ways to quell the violence of the time and to shrink the divide between black and white America. The Judge also exerted his influence beyond racial issues and advocated for women's rights. As a trustee of the Yale Corporation, he successfully fought to allow undergraduate enrollment for women at Yale College.
In 1977, Judge Higginbotham's accomplishments, both on the bench and in civic matters, led President Jimmy Carter to appoint him to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Higginbotham sat on the Third Circuit for 16 years, served as chief judge from 1989 to 1991, and as senior judge through the completion of his judicial career in 1993. He described his judicial philosophy as “evolutionary in terms of what is fair and just in a society.” Through his rulings and subsequent writing, he reminded us that when our country was founded, the hope and promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were tarnished by the fact that the United States had over 500,000 slaves. Judge Higginbotham believed that equality for all under the law requires progressive interpretation of our founding documents and continued focus on the inequities that still exist. As he put it, “… it is possible that with the obvious pride we have in the few who make it, that we may fail to recognize how long the road behind us is and how many there are on that road who still are deprived by history of the utilization of their talents…. We cannot become anesthetized by the success of a few and oblivious to the deprivation of the many.”
In 1993, Judge Higginbotham retired from the bench and began a new phase of his quest to achieve racial equality under the law. Even after three decades of remarkable public service, Judge Higginbotham took no time to rest, often quoting Robert Frost's words, “ I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep.” He focused his post-judicial life on the future, often asking who in the next generation would “carry the baton into the new millennium.” As a professor at Harvard University, he poured his energy and passion into preparing tomorrow's leaders to take that baton. He taught numerous courses and many of his students recall his oft-repeated words: “if you do not stand up for something, you'll fall for anything.”
Judge Higginbotham's work as a scholar and historian helped transform our nation's perception of race in America. His thorough research of nearly 250 years of legal documents involving racial issues formed the basis for a flood of books and articles in which he dissected the many aspects of discrimination embedded in America's legal system. For example, he hosted a conference on the centennial of Plessy v. Ferguson, using the occasion to urge the young minds of the next generation to take full advantage of the hard-won opportunities created by Brown v. Board of Education. He once commented to a group of recent law school graduates, “What should be our theme to America?... It is that in the long, bloody and terrible history of race in America, there is no more time for foolishness.” His words and his actions still compel each of us to face the ugly parts of our nation's history as well as the glorious ones, and to respond, with commitment, to the public arena.
Many remember Judge Higginbotham as what we now call a multi-tasker, especially during his retirement. When he wasn't teaching, he was frequently in a car on the way to the airport, dictating one of the over 100 speeches he delivered each year. When not addressing audiences, he often could be found testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, attending monthly meetings of the United States Commission on Human Rights, serving on numerous boards of trustees, including the New York Times and National Geographic, or arguing voting rights cases on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus before the Supreme Court. He extended his fervor for equal justice overseas as a consultant to President Nelson Mandela on the formation of the South African constitution and as an advocate for democracy education in South Africa.
Not surprisingly, Judge Higginbotham was recognized with numerous awards for his leadership as jurist, historian, scholar, advocate, mentor and ordinary citizen. His many honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award, the NAACP Spingarn Medal, the ACLU Medal, the National Human Relations Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Philadelphia Bar Association, the Outstanding Young Man Award from the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, and honorary degrees from over 60 universities.
Judge Higginbotham is remembered by many, including me, as a true American hero: a giant among men, who began his life in the most modest of circumstances, yet rose to extraordinary heights. Rosa Parks, another American whose own story continues to inspire us, appropriately noted after his passing, “I think he really had a great idea that we are all equal people.” Rosa Parks’ words capture what I believe to be the essence of Judge Higginbotham's legacy: he helped pry open the doors leading to the American dream for ordinary people from all walks of life.
So in this month when we celebrate the achievements of African Americans, I am honored to pay tribute to Leon Higginbotham’s life of courage and commitment to justice; of integrity and intellect; his life of advocacy and action, service and scholarship. Judge Higginbotham’s life was a testament to the enduring power of the words “we shall overcome.” Leon Higginbotham helped our nation move closer to the ideal expressed on the building across the street from this chamber: “Equal Justice under Law.” We’re proud to have his wife, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, as well as numerous family members, friends, former clerks and colleagues here with us today as we honor his life and work and seek to keep the flame of Leon Higginbotham burning ever brightly.
