[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 71 (Wednesday, May 2, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E921]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     A TRIBUTE TO OLIVER WHITE HILL

                                 ______
                                 

                     HON. ROBERT C. ``BOBBY'' SCOTT

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                          Tuesday, May 1, 2007

  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the 
100th birthday of Oliver White Hill, who dedicated his life and legal 
talents to making the City of Richmond, the Commonwealth of Virginia, 
and this entire country a place of promise and opportunity for all. Mr. 
Hill used his legal talents to bravely confront and help eradicate 
decades of racial inequality and injustice.
  Oliver White Hill was born Oliver White in Richmond, Virginia. After 
his mother remarried, the Hill family moved to Washington, DC, where 
Oliver White Hill graduated from the legendary Dunbar High School. Mr. 
Hill went on to earn his undergraduate degree from Howard University, 
and then attended Howard University's Law School, where, as destiny 
would have it, he was a classmate, rival in academic achievement, and 
close friend of Thurgood Marshall. Upon graduating in 1933, second in 
his class only to the future Supreme Court Justice, Mr. Hill spent his 
early years as a civil rights attorney in Richmond, Virginia.
  It was there that Mr. Hill grudgingly worked within the confines of 
the separate-but-equal framework of Plessy v. Ferguson, but he fought 
hard for better pay, full access to transportation, and better 
educational facilities for African American teachers and students. In 
fact, in 1940, working with civil rights legal stalwarts Thurgood 
Marshall, William H. Hastie, and Leon A. Ranson, Mr. Hill won his first 
of many landmark cases in Alston v. School Board of Norfolk, Va. In 
Alston, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered equal pay for black 
and white teachers within Norfolk's school system. Despite the 
decision, Mr. Hill was not completely satisfied as race barriers 
remained, and, as he once said, ``I went to law school so I could go 
out and fight segregation.''
  That fight would have to wait. Oliver White Hill joined the Army in 
1943 and admirably served his country in the European Theatre in World 
War II. After a distinguished military career, Mr. Hill immediately 
began to fight for democracy on a different front--back in the courts 
against racial discrimination.
  Soon after his return, Oliver White Hill won the right for equal 
transportation for Black school children in the Virginia Supreme Court. 
But once again, he was not satisfied with this ``separate-but-equal'' 
victory. The course of history was about to change, however, as Mr. 
Hill partnered with another civil rights legal legend, Spottswood 
Robinson III, in 1948.
  Together, Mr. Hill and Mr. Robinson brought dozens of civil rights 
lawsuits against school districts throughout the State of Virginia, 
with as many as seventy-five (75) cases pending at one time. By some 
estimates, Mr. Hill and Mr. Robinson brought more lawsuits than the 
total filed in all the other Southern States during this era.
  Despite the burning of a cross in his front yard and despite almost 
daily threatening telephone calls to his home, Mr. Hill persevered. In 
1951, undeterred and emboldened, Oliver White Hill and Spottswood 
Robinson decided to move beyond ``separate-but-equal'' and attack 
segregation head-on.
  That year, Mr. Hill and Mr. Robinson shouldered the cause of the 
African American students at the all-black R.R. Morton High School in 
Farmville, VA, who had walked out of their leaking, poorly heated 
classroom building. The resulting desegregation lawsuit, Davis v. 
County School Board of Prince Edward County, was one of several cases 
decided collectively as Brown v. Board of Education by the U.S. Supreme 
Court in 1954.
  While Oliver White Hill is best known as the fierce, tireless civil 
rights litigator who helped bring to a close America's segregation-era, 
his involvement in the community went beyond the courtroom. In 1949, he 
became the first African American elected to the Richmond City Council 
since Reconstruction. In the early 1960s, Mr. Hill served as Federal 
Housing Commissioner in the Department of Housing and Urban 
Development. In addition to his local and Federal government posts, Mr. 
Hill served as an officer or member on the boards of many 
organizations, including the National Legal Committee of the NAACP, the 
National Bar Association, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, 
the Virginia State Bar Bench/Bar Relations Committee, and the Old 
Dominion Bar Association, which he co-founded.
  For his decades of dedication to the law and accomplishments in the 
field of civil rights, Oliver White Hill has earned many accolades, 
including the ``Lawyer of the Year Award'' from the National Bar 
Association in 1959, the ``Simple Justice Award'' from the NAACP Legal 
Defense Fund in 1986, and the ``Justice Thurgood Marshall Award'' from 
the American Bar Association in 1993. In 1999, President Clinton 
awarded Mr. Hill the highest honor the nation can bestow, the 
Presidential Medal of Freedom. A year later Mr. Hill received the 
American Bar Association Medal, the National Bar Association ``Hero of 
Law Award,'' and the ``Harvard Medal of Freedom'' for his role in the 
landmark Brown decision. Most recently, in 2005, Mr. Hill was awarded 
the NAACP's highest honor, the Springarn Medal.
  In 2000, several legal admirers founded the Oliver White Hill 
Foundation. The Foundation encourages young lawyers to become advocates 
in the field of individual rights and liberties and to carry on Mr. 
Hill's civil rights work. Lawyers inspired by the Foundation work with 
the hope that discrimination based on race, gender, national origin, 
sexual preference, and religion will ultimately be abolished, just as 
Mr. Hill has spent his life hoping for and working towards.
  Madam, Speaker, I offer my congratulations to Oliver White Hill and 
pay tribute to him for being one of history's most important civil 
rights legal pioneers.

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