James Aaron Washington Jr. (circa 1915 – August 29, 1998) was a Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia from 1971 to 1984. He was also a professor and dean of the law school at Howard University. An expert on civil rights litigation, he helped in the formulation of the Supreme Court case ''Bolling vs. Sharpe '' that outlawed racial segregation in District of Columbia public schools. He was born in

Asheville, North Carolina Asheville ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 11th-most populous cit ...

. He received a bachelor's degree from Howard in 1936 and a law degree in 1939, followed by a Master of Laws degree from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1941. He worked in the War Division of the U.S. Department of Justice during World War II, then returned to Howard as a professor of law in 1946. In 1966 he was named

John Mercer Langston John Mercer Langston (December 14, 1829 – November 15, 1897) was an American abolitionist, attorney, educator, activist, diplomat, and politician. He was the founding dean of the law school at Howard University and helped create the department ...

Professor of Law, and in 1969 he became dean of the law school. He was named to the Superior Court in 1971 by President

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

. He was severely injured in 1976 when a fall broke his neck, but returned to the bench in a wheelchair in 1977 and served until his retirement in 1984. Having extensive experience in civil rights legislation, he worked for the

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. ...

(NAACP) during the 1940s and 1950s to advance their goal of overturning the 1896 Supreme Court decision

Plessy v. Ferguson ''Plessy v. Ferguson'', 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality ...

, which had legalized segregation of public facilities by race under the doctrine of "separate but equal". He helped to prepare legal arguments and advised the NAACP teams that were drawing up briefs, testing presentations, and holding moot court exercises. This work eventually culminated in the 1954 Supreme Court decision in ''Brown vs. Board of Education'', which found that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional because they were "inherently unequal." He was married to Ada Collins Washington for 51 years until her death in 1987. They had four daughters and four sons. He died at his home in

Silver Spring, Maryland Silver Spring is a census-designated place (CDP) in southeastern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, near Washington, D.C. Although officially unincorporated, in practice it is an edge city, with a population of 81,015 at the 2020 censu ...

on August 29, 1998.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Washington, James A. Jr. 1910s births 1998 deaths African-American judges Howard University School of Law alumni Harvard Law School alumni People from Asheville, North Carolina District of Columbia judges Superior court judges in the United States 20th-century American judges 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century African-American lawyers