Spottswood Robinson, U.S. appeals judge, dies in Virginia at 82

Jet, Nov 2, 1998

Spottswood W. Robinson III, a lawyer who later became the first Black judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., in 1966 and a former dean of the Howard University Law School, died at his Richmond, Virginia, home. The retired chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was 82.

He had been in deteriorating health for several years, according to his son.

He was a fighter and a champion. He represented plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case that outlawed segregation in America's schools.

Robinson was also part of the NAACP legal team that from 1949 to 1951 defended the Martinsville Seven, a case in which seven Black men were accused of raping a White woman in Martinsville.

A Richmond native, Robinson completed his third year at Virginia Union University and was accepted into Howard University's Law School. There he finished first in his graduating class of 1939.

He credited the law school with instilling the notion of social responsibility. "One of the things that was drilled into my head was ... `This legal education that you're getting is not just for you, it was for everybody. So when you leave here, you want to put it to good use.'"

Robinson became a full-time lawyer in 1947. Once he gave up his practice, he returned to Howard University where he was dean for three years. After he stepped down from that post, President John F. Kennedy nominated him as district judge, and President Lyndon B. Johnson named him to the D.C. Circuit Court. In 1981 he became the D.C. U.S. Appeals Court's chief judge. He retired in 1992.

Survivors include his wife, Marian Wilkerson Robinson; a son, Spottswood W. Robinson IV of Richmond; a daughter, Nina Govan of Greenbelt, MD; and a sister, Mrs. Isadore Burke of Freeport, Bahamas.