Oliver White Hill Sr. (1907-2007)

On behalf of local plaintiffs, civil rights attorney Oliver White Hill Sr. and law partners Martin A. Martin and Spottswood Robinson III filed Davis v. Prince Edward in 1951 to challenge racial segregation in public schools. This case, along with several others consolidated into Brown v. Board, led to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision declaring public school segregation unconstitutional. Defying a desegregation order in 1959, Prince Edward County closed its public schools. Hill and NAACP leaders Roy Wilkins and L. Francis Griffin led a rally at the county courthouse in 1961 denouncing the closings. Schools reopened in 1964 as ordered by the Supreme Court in Griffin v. Prince Edward.