Samuel Wilbert Tucker (1913-1990)

UM-55

Samuel W. Tucker, civil rights attorney, was born in Alexandria, where he organized a sit-in at the Whites-only public library in 1939. After graduating from Howard University in 1933 and serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he moved to Emporia. During the 1960s, he became head of the Virginia NAACP’s legal team and a partner in the Richmond law firm of Hill, Tucker, and Marsh. He pursued several successful U.S. Supreme Court cases, co-authoring the brief for Griffin v. Prince Edward County (1964) and arguing Green v. New Kent (1968) and Wright v. Emporia (1972). Tucker’s work helped overturn the tactics that localities had used to resist federal school-desegregation mandates.

Department of Historic Resources, 2024

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Norfolk Journal and Guide, 17 July 1976. Richmond Times-Dispatch, 19, 20 Oct. 1990, 25 Feb. 2000. Washington Post, 11 June 2000. Emporia City Directories Griffin v. Prince Edward: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/377/218/ Green v. New Kent: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/391/430/ Wright v. Emporia: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/407/451/ S. W. Ackerman, “Samuel W. Tucker: The Unsung Hero of the School Desegregation Movement,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (Summer 2000): 98-103. J. Douglas Smith, Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). Brian Daugherity, Keep on Keeping On: The NAACP and the Implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016). “Samuel W. Tucker (1913-1990),” Changemakers, Library of Virginia. https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/changemakers/items/show/402