James Nabrit Jr., civil rights lawyer and former president of Howard University, dies at 77

Jet, Jan 19, 1998

James Nabrit Jr., a civil rights lawyer and former president of Howard University, died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He was 97.

Nabrit was Howard University's second Black president, serving in the post from 1960 to 1965 and from 1968 to 1969. He also served as dean of the university's law school for a decade.

A graduate of Morehouse College and Northwestern University Law School, he joined Howard's law faculty in 1936 and two years later taught what became recognized as the first formal civil rights law course at any law school.

In the early 1950s, Nabrit took a case to the U.S. Supreme Court that successfully challenged the District of Columbia's segregated public education system. The case, Bolling vs. Sharpe, was argued along with the Brown vs. Board of Education case, and the high court ruled that segregated public school systems violated the Constitution.

Nabrit was appointed in 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the second-highest post in the United States' U. N. mission, deputy to the chief delegate, Arthur J. Goldberg.

He is survived by one son, James M. Nabrit III, two brothers and three sisters.