Robert Lee Carter

(Redirected from Robert Lee Carter )

American judge (1917–2012)

Not to be confused with Robert L. Carter (Illinois judge) .

Robert Lee Carter (March 11, 1917 – January 3, 2012) was an American lawyer, civil rights activist and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York .

Personal history and early life

[(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_L._Carter&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Personal history and early life")
]

Carter in the Lincoln University yearbook, 1937

Carter was born on March 11, 1917, in Caryville, Florida . As part of the Great Migration of southern blacks moving north, his mother Annie Martin Carter took him, when he was six weeks old, and his siblings, to Newark, New Jersey , where his father, Robert L. Carter Sr., worked.[_citation needed
] However, his father died when he was a year old. Nonetheless, the family stayed in Newark, and his mother worked as a laundress to support her family, helped by her eldest daughter, who worked as a seamstress until marrying when Carter was 12.[citation needed
_] Carter began high school at Barringer High School in Newark.

The family moved to East Orange , New Jersey during Carter's high school years, where Carter's activism began after he read that a state court had ruled against racially discriminatory practices such as that high school's only allowing black students to use the swimming pool on Fridays, and entered the pool with white students, defying a teacher's threats. The school chose to close down its pool rather than integrate it. Carter graduated at age 16 from East Orange High School after having skipped two grades.

Carter earned an Artium Baccalaureus degree in political science from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1937 and his Bachelor of Laws from Howard University School of Law in 1940, both on scholarship and from predominantly black institutions. Carter earned his Master of Laws from Columbia Law School in 1941, after writing an influential master's thesis that would later define the NAACP's legal strategy on the right to freedom of association under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution .

Carter joined the United States Army Air Corps a few months before the United States entered World War II . Experiences such as a white captain's welcoming him to the Augusta, Georgia station by telling him that they did not believe in educating black people, made Carter militant. Nonetheless, Carter completed Officer Candidate School and received a commission as lieutenant. As the only black officer at Harding Field in Baton Rouge, Louisiana , Carter integrated the officer's club, to the consternation of many. He then transferred to Columbus, Ohio , but continued to face hostility based on his race.

In 1946, Carter married Gloria Spencer (who died in 1971) and had two sons: John W. Carter, who became a justice of the New York Supreme Court in the Bronx , and David Carter.

Civil rights advocate

[(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_L._Carter&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Civil rights advocate")
]

Carter being awarded honorary degree by Fordham Law School , dean William Treanor . November 2004

In 1944, as Carter's wartime service ended, he began working at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund ("LDF"), and the following year he became an assistant special counsel at the LDF. By 1948 Carter had become a legal assistant to Thurgood Marshall . He worked on a number of major school desegregation cases, including _Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma _ (1948), _Sweatt v. Painter _ (1950) and _McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents _ (1950). Later, he argued on behalf of Oliver Brown , the plaintiff in one of the five school desegregation cases consolidated into _Brown v. Board of Education _ upon reaching the U.S. Supreme Court . Carter advocated bringing in psychological research by Kenneth and Mamie Clark on the deleterious effects that segregated schools had upon minority students' learning and development, which the unanimous court later relied upon in overturning _Plessy v. Ferguson _ and deeming public school segregation unconstitutional. He subsequently worked on _Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County _, challenging a Virginia school board's attempt to avoid the desegregation required by Brown.

…

[(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_L._Carter&action=edit&section=6 "Edit section: Notable cases")
]

As a judge, Carter handled litigation concerning the merger of the National Basketball Association and the American Basketball Association , as well as settled a basketball antitrust lawsuit and presided over several cases involving basketball stars.[_citation needed
] Carter also handled cases involving discrimination against black and Hispanic applicants to the New York City police force.[citation needed
_]

Later life and legacy

[(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_L._Carter&action=edit&section=7 "Edit section: Later life and legacy")
]

Carter wrote numerous law review articles and essays on civil rights and discrimination in the United States, often focusing on school segregation; he also wrote about his longtime friends and colleagues Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston . In 2004, the NAACP awarded Carter its Spingarn Medal . …