First “First Monday” for African-Americans: William T. Coleman Becomes First African-American to Clerk for Supreme Court Justice
William T. Coleman, a recent graduate of Harvard Law School, made history on this day as the first African-American to clerk for a Supreme Court Justice. In the 1948-1949 term of the court he would clerk for Justice Felix Frankfurter.
Coleman went on to a long and active career in public service. Prior to his service as a clerk on the Supreme Court, he clerked for a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. After his Supreme Court clerkship ended, he became an attorney with the prominent New York City law firm of Paul, Weiss and Rifkind. Thurgood Marshall, Director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, soon recruited him to assist on the Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the Supreme Court on May 17, 1954 declared racially “separate but equal” public schools unconstitutional. He also became a member of the NAACP national legal community and a member of its executive committee.
Over the years, Coleman served by Republican and Democratic Party presidents. He was a member of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Committee on Government Employment Policy (1959-1961) and under President John F. Kennedy was a member of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1963-1975). President Gerald Ford appointed him Secretary of Transportation in 1975, where he served until 1977. Regrettably, in December 1976 he rejected consumer advocates demands for mandatory air bags in automobiles, choosing instead a plan favored by the automobile manufacturers.
In September 1995 President Bill Clinton awarded Coleman the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Read: Todd C. Pepper’s article on Coleman’s “Breaking the Color Barrier at the Supreme Court”
View William T. Coleman’s Oral History video
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here