Aloyisus Leon Higginbotham Jr. (February 25, 1928 – December 14, 1998) was an American civil rights advocate, historian, presidential adviser, and federal court judge. From 1990 to 1991, he served as chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Originally nominated to the bench by President Kennedy in 1963, Higginbotham was the seventh African-American Article III judge appointed in the United States, and the first African-American United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He was elevated to the Third Circuit in 1977, serving as a federal judge for nearly 30 years in all. In 1995, President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Higginbotham used the name "Leon" informally.
Early life and education Higginbotham was born on February 25, 1928, in Ewing Township, a suburb of Trenton, New Jersey.In Memoriam: A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.; 1928–1998, The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, January 21, 1999.Interview with The Honorable A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., for the Historical Society of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit His mother, Emma Lee Higginbotham, was a maid, and his father, Aloyisus Leon Higginbotham Sr., was a factory worker. Higginbotham was raised in a largely African-American neighborhood, and attended a segregated grammar school.
Higginbotham attended Lincoln School, a segregated high school in Trenton. Before Higginbotham attended, no black student had been put on the academic track (which was a significant step towards attending college), because Latin, a requirement for the program, was not taught at the black elementary schools.Lewis, Neil, "Black Judge's Success Story Begins in Cold Attic", The New York Times, July 19, 1991. Higginbotham's mother convinced the principal at the junior high school to enroll him in a second-year Latin course, even though he had never studied first year Latin. To ensure that he was able to pass the required classes, the junior high Latin teacher offered to tutor him at her home during the summer. Higginbotham's family was of modest economic means, so he worked while attending school, mowing lawns, shoveling snow, and working as a bus boy at the Stacy Trent hotel. While in high school, Higginbotham manipulated his birth certificate in order to get working papers at 15, a year before the law allowed, so that he could work in a pottery factory shoveling clay.
Undergraduate education At 16 Higginbotham enrolled in Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana. He chose Purdue because it admitted black students; was cheaper, at that time, than Rutgers University; and offered tuition discounts for good academic performance. Higginbotham was also interested in Purdue because he wanted to be an engineer, and Purdue was known as an engineering school.Transcript, A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Oral History Interview I, 10/7/76, by Joe B. Frantz, Internet Copy, LBJ Library.
Higginbotham entered Purdue as a freshman in 1944. At the time, the student body was composed of approximately 6,000 white students, and 12 black students. Although eligible for admission, black students were not permitted to live in the dormitories. Higginbotham and the other 11 black students were placed in a building called International House, which was the only building in which blacks could live in West Lafayette. The students slept in the attic, which was unheated. Higginbotham sought a meeting with the University President, Edward C. Elliott, to ask permission for the students to sleep in a section of one of the heated dormitories. Elliott's response was purportedly "[t]he law doesn't require us to put you in those dormitories. The law doesn't even require us to let you in. You take it or leave it." Higginbotham would later identify this encounter, and an incident where he was traveling with the Purdue debate team but unable to stay in a hotel with the rest of the members, as the events that caused him to pursue a career in the law, saying:
Higginbotham transferred to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1945. On the day that Higginbotham entered Antioch, one other black student was also admitted, Coretta Scott, who would later become Coretta Scott King after marrying Martin Luther King Jr. At Antioch, Higginbotham served as the head of the college chapter of the NAACP.In Memoriam, Nathaniel R. Jones, 112 Harvard Law Review, 1801, 1818. While in college, Higginbotham successfully convinced the Governor of Ohio to support legislation to lower the voting age to 18. Higginbotham earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949.
Law school In the fall of 1949 Higginbotham entered Yale Law School. As he had in grade school, he worked, this time as a butcher, to help support himself while at Yale. He was a member of the moot court team and the Barrister's Union (a mock trial organization). Higginbotham advanced to the finals of the first year moot court competition. The moot court panel before which he argued included Associate Justice Tom C. Clark (of the Supreme Court of the United States) and renowned appellate advocate John W. Davis. (A few years later, Davis would argue against Thurgood Marshall on behalf of the State of Kansas in Brown v. Board of Education.) In 1951, Higginbotham competed on a moot court team with Richard N. Gardner, who would later serve as United States Ambassador to Spain and the United States Ambassador to Italy. Higginbotham's Yale team competed against a team from Temple University Law School, which included another African American law student from the Philadelphia area, Clifford Scott Green, who would later become Higginbotham's colleague (first as a law partner and then as a fellow Judge on the Eastern District of Pennsylvania bench).
As a first-year student, Higginbotham worked as a research assistant to a professor, who arranged for him to attend the oral arguments in Sweatt v. Painter, which dealt with the admission of blacks to the University of Texas. Thurgood Marshall argued the case on behalf of Herman Sweatt, who had been denied admission to the university's law school. Higginbotham would later describe the experience of seeing Marshall arguing: "With controlled outrage, Marshall eloquently asserted the constitutional promise of equality for Sweatt, for all African Americans and, it seemed, for me personally." When the Court ruled in Sweatt's favor, Higginbotham later wrote, he felt that he had "witnessed the birth of racial justice in the Supreme Court." Higginbotham received his Bachelor of Laws from Yale in 1952. In 1969, as the first black person to become a trustee of Yale, he advocated opening the university's undergraduate program to women.American Bar Association profile of Higginbotham, as published for Black History Month, 2001.
Legal career After graduation, Higginbotham initially sought employment with law firms in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, however, he was unable to find work at any of the major firms as a result of his race. He began his career as a law clerk for Judge Curtis Bok of the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas. In 1953 he was hired by Philadelphia County District Attorney Richardson Dilworth as an assistant district attorney. Prior to Dilworth's arrival, no black lawyer had ever argued on behalf of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the Courts of Common Pleas. Higginbotham was given the opportunity to argue both in front of the Court of Common Pleas, and the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.
In 1954 Higginbotham went into private practice as a member of the first African American law firm in Philadelphia, Norris, Schmidt, Green, Harris, and Higginbotham. In addition to Higginbotham, three of the other named partners went on to become judges; Harvey Schmidt and Doris Harris would later serve as judges on the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, and Clifford Scott Green was appointed to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Higginbotham stayed in private practice until 1962. While at the firm, Higginbotham practiced criminal defense and personal injury law. From 1960 to 1962 he was President of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP.
Public service
While still in private practice, Higginbotham simultaneously served in several government positions; he was a special Deputy State Attorney General from 1956 to 1962, a special hearing officer for conscientious objections for the United States Department of Justice from 1960 to 1962, and a Commissioner on the Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission from 1961 to 1962. He was a faculty member of the Rutgers University Law School.
Federal Trade Commission In 1960 Higginbotham, as a delegate at the National NAACP convention, supported Hubert Humphrey over John F. Kennedy for the organization's endorsement for president. Nevertheless, Kennedy appointed Higginbotham to be a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission in 1962, the first African American appointed as a commissioner on any regulatory commission. Justice Byron White administered the oath of office.
Higginbotham ultimately became a strong supporter of President Kennedy, and began attending functions on behalf of the administration. He was also a guest at White House functions, including a state dinner for the King and Queen of Afghanistan that took place several weeks before Kennedy's assassination.
As of 2021, Higginbotham is one of just three African Americans to have served on the FTC. (The other two are Mozelle W. Thompson (who served from 1997 to 2004) and Pamela Jones Harbour (who served from 2003 to 2009).)
U.S. District Court Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who had come to know Higginbotham through his work on the FTC, recommended that President Kennedy nominate him to be a judge on the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which Kennedy did in 1963. Higginbotham's nomination was held up by Mississippi Senator James Eastland, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a committed segregationist. Eastland delayed the nomination long enough so that, despite being passed by a subcommittee, Higginbotham's nomination lapsed following the death of President Kennedy, and the beginning of a new congressional term. Higginbotham received a recess appointment from President Lyndon B. Johnson on January 6, 1964, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania vacated by Judge James Cullen Ganey. He was nominated to the same position by President Johnson on February 3, 1964. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 14, 1964, and received his commission on March 17, 1964. At the time of his appointment, he was 36 years old. His service on the district court terminated on November 7, 1977, due to his elevation to the Third Circuit.
Adviser to President Johnson
Following his appointment to the District Court, Higginbotham developed a relationship with President Johnson, attending various White House functions and conferences in the mid-1960s. The day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Higginbotham was called to the White House to take part in a series of meetings to advise the President on how to respond to King's death. Other notable figures at the meeting were Vice President Humphrey, Justice Marshall, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, Andrew Brimmer, Clarence Mitchell, Clifford Alexander, and Bayard Rustin. Higginbotham stayed the night at the White House, attended a service at the Washington National Cathedral, and continued to advise the President into the next days.