[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 108 (Wednesday, June 27, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4500-S4501]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   REMEMBERING JUDGE GEORGE LEIGHTON

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, 27 years ago this week, one of the 
towering giants of American justice announced that he was retiring. 
Thurgood Marshall was a pillar of America's civil rights revolution, 
architect of the legal strategy that ended the shameful era of official 
segregation in this Nation, and the first African-American Justice of 
the U.S. Supreme Court. His name will be forever linked with such civil 
rights icons as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and 
John Lewis.
  But the moral arc of the universe is never bent by just a few hands. 
We know that. The foot soldiers for justice in America's civil rights 
revolution also includes millions of people whose names are not 
recorded in history books--people like the men and women of Montgomery, 
AL, who walked to work and church and every other place for more than a 
year in 1955 and '56 rather than ride on the back of segregated city 
buses. The moral arc of the universe was bent by thousands of ordinary 
men and women who risked their livelihoods and sometimes even their 
lives by daring to try to register to vote in some states in the Deep 
South before the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
  The city of Chicago was honored to be the adopted home for more than 
70 years of a men who bent the moral arc of the universe more than 
most. George Leighton's name may not be as well known as that of his 
old friend, Thurgood Marshall, but his contribution to the civil rights 
movement and to American justice was profound. Judge Leighton died 
earlier this month at the age of 105. If you think that is remarkable, 
consider this: He only retired 6 years ago, at the age of 99, still 
strong and sharp as a tack.
  As a pioneering civil rights lawyer, George Leighton took on 
entrenched racism and injustice in Chicago and far beyond. He fought 
for fair housing and integrated public schools in Illinois and for 
voting rights and equal access to jury service in the Deep South, and 
he won. Several of his legal victories took him all the way to the U.S. 
Supreme Court.
  George Leighton was also a distinguished law professor and a judge. 
In 1969, he made history as the first African American ever to sit on 
the Illinois Appellate Court. Six years later, President Gerald Ford 
nominated him to serve on the Federal bench as a U.S. District Court 
Judge for the Northern District of Illinois. As a fellow judge and 
admirer and recently, Judge Leighton defined for generations of 
Chicagoans what it meant to be a lawyer.
  He was a man of enormous intelligent, integrity, and courage who 
dedicate his first to seeing that the law was applied equally to all. 
He had a heroic imagination. Board and raised in the era of Jim Crow, 
he had the vision to imaging a more just America and the courage to 
help bring that America into existence. His work and his sacrifices 
broke barriers and changed the meaning of equality in this country.
  Judge Leighton was eloquent, with a rich baritone voice. He dressed 
impeccably, elegantly, and stood ramrod straight well into his 90s. He 
was a champion chess player. Despite all of that, he was a remarkably 
humble man.
  He was born in 1912 in New Bedford, MA, one of seven children of 
immigrant parents from the Cape Verde Islands off the western coast of 
Africa. His family's name was Leitao--a Creole name--but a fourth-grade 
teacher changed his name to Leighton, reasoning that he would go 
further in life with a name that sounded more American.
  He and his siblings worked with his parents in cranberry bogs and 
picked strawberries and blueberries from March until late November 
every year. His early education was hit-or-miss, since education had to 
fit in around the demands of farm work. He had reached only the seventh 
grade by age 17, when he left home to work on an oil tanker sailing 
from Fall River, MA, to Aruba, off the northern coast of South America. 
That job ended when the ship's crew mutinied.
  George Leighton returned to New Bedford, working in restaurant 
kitchens and playing percussion in a dance band.
  Always a voracious reader, he borrowed books wherever he could and 
took classes through the Works Project Administration. In 1936, he tied 
for first place in a local essay contest. With his $200 prize money, he 
talked Howard University into admitting him on a conditional basis, 
without a high school diploma. He made the dean's list that first 
semester and every semester and graduated from Howard 2 years later, 
Phi Beta Kappa.
  It was during his Howard years that he met Virginia Quivers, the 
woman who would become his wife and the love of his life.
  After Howard, George Leighton attended Harvard Law School on 
scholarship--one of the few African Americans of his generation to 
attend that prestigious school--working odd jobs to support himself.
  His law studies were interrupted after 1 year by World War II. For 3 
years, he served as an officer in the U.S. Army's fabled 93rd Infantry 
Division, an all-Black division, in places such as Guadalcanal.
  He returned to Harvard after the war's end and graduated a year 
later.
  He moved to Chicago to start his legal career. He had never been to 
Chicago before, but he knew two things about the city: It was a 
cauldron of racial tension, and Chicago voters had just elected the 
only African-American Member of Congress. There was important work to 
do in Chicago, and there was a glimmer of hope that change was 
possible.
  The Chicago that greeted George Leighton was a hard place. Even with 
a Harvard law degree, George Leighton couldn't rent office space or 
dine in many of the restaurants or stay at a hotel in the Loop. He was 
not allowed to join the segregated Chicago Bar Association or the 
American Bar Association.
  For 18 years, he practiced law with other African American attorneys, 
from an office in the shadow of Comiskey Park on Chicago's South Side. 
When his clients couldn't afford to pay him, which was not uncommon, he 
worked for free.
  He built a national reputation for criminal and civil rights cases 
and several times won cases before the U.S.

[[Page S4501]]

Supreme Court. He helped integrate the Chicago Housing Authority and 
the public schools of Harrisburg, IL. In the South, he successfully 
challenged an amendment to the Alabama State constitution that used a 
``constitutional knowledge'' test to deny African Americans the right 
to vote. He also helped to end the exclusion of African Americans from 
jury duty in Mississippi.
  In 1951, 5 years after arriving in Chicago, George Leighton was 
indicted by a Cook County grand jury. His ``crime''? Telling his 
clients, an African-American family, that they had a legal right to 
rent an apartment in the then all-White Chicago suburb of Cicero. 
Enraged neighbors rioted, nearly burning the apartment building nearly 
to the ground.
  The county grand jury indicted George Leighton on charges of 
conspiracy to incite riot and lower property values. Judge Leighton was 
represented by his friend, Thurgood Marshall, and the indictment was 
quickly dismissed.
  Not long after that, with the support of Chicago Mayor Richard J. 
Daley, George Leighton was elected as a Cook County judge. He was later 
elevated to the State appellate court, the first African American to 
sit on that bench.
  He served as a Federal judge from 1976 until 1989. He would have 
preferred to stay on the bench, but his beloved wife, Virginia, had 
suffered several strokes some time before. Judge Leighton's insistence 
to provide her with round-the-clock medical care had depleted the 
family's savings, and he needed to make more money.
  He returned to private law practice, joining the Chicago firm of Neal 
& Leroy. His new partner, Langdon Neal, was the son of Judge Leighton's 
old friend. Judge Leighton could have joined any law firm in Chicago, 
but he chose once again to go with a small, minority-owned firm. That 
was important to him.
  Langdon Neal tells the story about walking into the office early one 
morning to find the lights already on. He looked into Judge Leighton's 
office, saw him sprawled out on the floor, and feared the worst. Before 
his law partner could say a word, Judge Leighton pushed himself up and 
did 10 more push-ups. He was taking a rest during his morning 
exercises.
  At 77, he still had a lot of fight still in him. For the next 22 
years, he would practice law, looking and sounding like a man decades 
younger. At 97, his hearing, vision, and cholesterol were all still 
perfect, and he was only 3 pounds heavier than when he was released 
from Active military duty.
  As a Cook County judge in 1965, Judge Leighton acquitted two Latino 
men accused of beating and slashing a Chicago police officer. Judge 
Leighton believed that the officers who testified against the men were 
lying, and he told them so.
  The decision touched off a public furor and angry calls to remove 
Judge Leighton from the bench. A Chicago Tribune reporter asked the 
judge if he feared for his safety. No, Judge Leighton quipped, ``I'm 
making careful plans to die of old age in office.''
  Six years ago this month, June 2012, the Cook County courthouse where 
Judge Leighton acquitted those men, the courthouse where he first made 
his name as a civil rights lawyer in the 1940s and '50s and where he 
began his career as a judge, was renamed in his honor. ``26th and Cal'' 
is now the Judge George N. Leighton Criminal Court Building. It is one 
of many tributes in his honor.
  In 2005, the main post office in his boyhood home of New Bedford, MA, 
was renamed in his honor. In 2008, the Illinois Supreme Court Historic 
Preservation Commission established the Honorable George N. Leighton 
Justice Award. Judge Leighton accepted these and other honors with 
grace, humility, and a bit of puzzlement. He was always genuinely 
surprised that people found his life worth celebrating in such ways.
  There was only one honor that Judge Leighton wanted for himself at 
the end of his life. His final wish was to be buried in Arlington 
National Cemetery.
  Judge Leighton died in New Bedford on June 6, the 74th anniversary of 
D-Day. In a reflection of Judge Leighton's distinguished military 
service, his place in American history, and the esteem in which he was 
held by so many, Arlington National Cemetery has approved his burial in 
those hallowed grounds.
  Sometime in the not-too-distant future, Judge George Leighton, the 
son of immigrants who bent the moral arc of history, will be laid to 
rest at Arlington National Cemetery. He will rest there in honor among 
such other American heroes as his old friend, Thurgood Marshall, 
General Benjamin O. Davis, the commander of the Tuskegee Airmen and the 
first African-American general in the U.S. Air Force, and other members 
of the Army's 93rd Infantry Division, with whom Judge Leighton fought 
with in World War II. It is a fitting final tribute to a great man who 
fought so long and in so many ways to preserve and defend freedom and 
liberty for all.
  I am honored to have known him, and Loretta and I want to offer our 
condolences to his family, especially to his daughters, Virginia and 
Barbara, and their husbands, to Judge Leighton's five grandchildren and 
eight great-grandchildren, and to his friends and colleagues.

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