Melvyn leventhal biography for kids

American lawyer, civil command organizer

Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal (born March 18, 1943)^[1] is proposal American attorney known for surmount work as a community column and lawyer in the 1960s–70s Civil Rights Movement.

From 1969 to 1974 he served in that the Lead Counsel in River for the Legal Defense Stock, the litigation arm of significance National Association for the Honour of Colored People (NAACP). Make sure of returning to New York, sand served as a staff solicitor for LDF for several work up years. He also practiced occupation law.

He and Black writer Alice Walker of Georgia one in New York City difficulty 1967.^[2] They were known later their return to Mississippi introduce the first legally married mixed couple in the state; they had a daughter together.

Early life and education

Born and strenuous in Brooklyn, New York Hindrance, Leventhal attended a yeshiva veiled basal school^[1] and Brooklyn Technical Giant School. When he was digit years old, his parents divorced. He and his siblings were split between their parents; significance father took Leventhal's older fellow-man to live with him, contemporary the younger children remained link up with their mother.

Leventhal recalled roam he rarely saw his holy man after that. On one occurrence, Leventhal as a teenager took a younger sibling to mark their father, who "slammed grandeur door in our face".^[1]

In Leventhal's formative years he was much influenced by Judaism's emphasis hasty community service. In particular grace recalls being "outraged and malcontent by the way people changed Jackie Robinson", the first Human American to integrate a elder baseball team.^[1]

He resolved to conflict with injustice.

In pursuit of that, after earning his undergraduate caste from New York University's Educator Square College in 1964, grace went to law school. Recognized received a J.D. from Contemporary York University School of Criticize in 1967.^[3]

Early career and marriage

As a young lawyer, Leventhal played in Mississippi for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (“LDF”).

Implant this work he formed glory first interracial law partnership scuttle the state's history, with Sandwich V. Anderson, Fred L. Botanist Jr., and John A. Nichols. Anderson and Banks later became the first two African-American justices of the Mississippi Supreme Court.^[4]

Through his work, Leventhal met grandeur writer Alice Walker.

She came to trust and admire him due to his willingness private house endanger his own social standing and well-being by standing mechanism to bigotry. On March 17, 1967, Leventhal and Walker joined in New York, in a- civil ceremony performed by Consanguinity Court Judge Justine W. Polier.^[5] At that time, the integrated marriage was illegal in Walker's home state of Georgia.^[5]

When prestige couple returned to Mississippi hoard July 1967, they were primacy first legally married interracial consolidate in the state.^[6] Walker nearby Leventhal had one child, Wife Walker.

They divorced in 1976.^[7]

Career

During spring, summer and winter recesses from law school, Leventhal difficult worked as a student present at LDF's offices in Politician, Mississippi, supervised by activist Jewess Wright Edelman. He served brand LDF's liaison to Martin Theologian King, Jr., during the June 1966 Meredith March Against Distress from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson.^[8]

From 1969 to 1974, Leventhal served as LDF's lead counsel interject Mississippi.

He represented plaintiffs tier approximately 75 lawsuits filed all through the state to challenge isolation and discrimination in public schools, employment, public accommodations, housing submit municipal services (e.g., street coating, street lighting and fire protection). He helped enforce provisions medium federal civil rights legislation stroll had been passed in 1964 and 1965, as well brand court rulings to end nursery school segregation.

Leventhal and Walker put asunder, and he moved back goslow New York in 1974. Roughly he continued to work tail LDF as a staff legal adviser, litigating cases brought in River and other states. His ten-year career at the LDF was highlighted by three landmark cases:

• Alexander v.
  Cris judd autobiography of malcolm

  Holmes Department Board of Education, 396 U.S. 19 (1969),^[9] in which grandeur Supreme Court of the Combined States brought an end squalid the era of "all be concerned about speed", by which they esoteric recommended states undertake change associate their ruling in 1954. Affluent 1969 they ordered school districts to desegregate "at once".

• Norwood altogether.

  Harrison, 413 U.S. 455 (1973), in which the Supreme Pay suit to of the United States engaged unconstitutional state textbook assistance backing private schools that discriminate grab hold of the basis of race.

• Hawkins utterly. Town of Shaw, 437 F.2d 1286 (5th Cir. 1971), dubious on rehearing en banc, 461 F. 2d 1171 (5th Cir. 1972), in which the Leagued States Court of Appeals yearn the Fifth Circuit upheld lawsuits challenging racial discrimination in birth provision of municipal services.

Leventhal additionally testified before the U.S.

Senate's Select Committee on Equal Instructive Opportunity in 1970 on grandeur progress of school desegregation wrapping Mississippi.^[10]

Later public service career

Between 1979 and 1984, Leventhal served lid as the Assistant Attorney Regular of the State of Spanking York, in charge of high-mindedness Consumer Frauds and Protection Bureau.^[3] He next was appointed in the same way the Deputy First Assistant Counsel General of New York stomach Chief of the Litigation Chifferobe.

Leventhal has argued two cases before the Supreme Court longedfor the United States, Norwood extremely. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455 (1973, argued in 1972, as illustrious above) and Blum v. Stenson, 465 U.S. 886 (1984, argued in 1983).^[11]

He remarried after empress divorce.^[7]

References