Oliver Hill is one of my heroes. Maybe the name doesn’t sound familiar to you but you know about him, too, I bet.
Born Oliver White in Richmond, he was the son of a minister who deserted the family when Mr. Hill was an infant. Mr. Hill took the name of his stepfather early in life and became Oliver W. Hill. At age 6, he moved with his family to Roanoke, where he attended elementary school. He went to the old Dunbar High School in Washington because of the inadequacy of Roanoke’s black schools.
In 1931, he graduated from Howard University, where he also earned a law degree in 1933. He was second in his law class, behind his best friend, Thurgood Marshall, who was to become a chief ally in the desegregation fight and who later was the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Still not familiar? Maybe you aren’t a history buff of the Civil Rights Era like I am. But take my word for it: Oliver Hill was the Real Deal.
During the segregation era, Mr. Hill’s legal team won landmark decisions involving voting rights, jury selection, access to school buses, employment protection and other matters. Mr. Hill played a key role on the legal team for the national organization in negotiating the historic victory in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education decision in 1954. That unanimous decision held that school desegregation is unconstitutional. After black students from Prince Edward County’s Robert R. Moton High School went on strike in 1951 to protest inadequate school facilities and wrote to him seeking legal help, his team met with them and eventually agreed to take their case. That case became one of the original cases in the Brown vs. Board of Education decision.
The Prince Edward County schools closed to avoid desegregation June 4, 1959, and remained closed until Sept. 2, 1964. At the height of the battle, Mr. Hill emphasized, “We are battling the segregationists, not the white race. We have no desire to take anything from any white person granted him under the law or our common Christian concepts. . . . . We are now in a period of desegregation and must remember that integration is a social process that is quite different, and which will come in time.”
Brown vs, the Board of Education. Wow! What a landmark case that was — and all because some people [Oliver Hill among them] had the forsight to start prepare for the showdown that would finally take place in the chambers of the US Supreme Court in 1954.
During the 1930s, Mr. Hill was part of what was called a “family group” formed at Howard University by faculty and students to combat segregation. “We knew one day there would have to be a Brown decision. We began making plans to move forward legally working to change the status quo,” he said in a 1981 interview.
Mr. Hill began practicing law in Roanoke but returned to Washington in 1936. Three years later, he moved to Richmond at the invitation of friends to join a law firm. Those plans fell through, and he opened his own office. He later joined Martin A. Martin and Spottswood Robinson III to form the law firm of Hill, Martin & Robinson at 623 N. Third St. Mr. Hill and Robinson toured Virginia seeking civil-rights cases. During the late 1930s and the early 1940s, their target was equalization of teachers’ pay, school facilities and bus transportation for black pupils.
You see, this is what I really admire. Someone who is not afraid of a long, hard fight. Someone who knows that the ideals the United States was built on are worth fighting for. Somebody who had vision and courage. That’s Oliver Hill.
I wonder what Oliver Hill thought about the erosion of civil rights we are experiencing in the post-9/11 USA. I wonder who will be as brave and courageous as Oliver Hill and start building the case now to counter the force of the looming Big Brother and reverse the tide that is sweeping American ideals and civil liberties out to sea. Who will be our Oliver Hill in these troubling times?
I never got to meet him. I have gotten to meet another one of my heroes from that rich period of American history. I met Douglas Wilder when he came to speak to our graduates here in Doha in 2006. I got to spend a bit of time with him and have to say he was everything I expected, maash’Allah. Oh how I wish I had the chance to meet Oliver Hill.
