Eleanor Holmes Norton Named Head of NYC Commission on Human Rights
Eleanor Holmes Norton became the highest-ranking African-American woman in New York City government on this day, as she was appointed head of the Commission on Human Rights by Mayor John Lindsay.
Early in her career, she had been a staff attorney with the ACLU and famously defended the racist and segregationist George Wallace, who had been denied use of Shea Stadium for a political rally (see September 30, 1968). The case was a classic example of the principle of “freedom for the thought we hate.” Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes articulated the principle in dissent in the Rosika Schwimmer on May 27, 1929.
In 1990, Norton was elected the nonvoting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives for the District of Columbia, and she took her seat on January 3, 1991.
Watch Eleanor Holmes Norton, “Activist of the Week”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OSa9uzjAlALearn more at Rep. Norton’s Congressional web site: http://www.norton.house.gov/
Learn more: Eleanor Holmes Norton and Joan Lester, Fire in My Soul (2003)