Julius Chambers, a North Carolina attorney who helped to shape U.S. civil rights law, died aged 76 on Friday after battling declining health, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Legal Defense Fund said in a statement.
Chambers and his partners argued landmark civil rights cases related to de-segregation and voting rights before the United States Supreme Court, according to the NAACP.
They included Swann v. the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education in 1971, which led to cross-town student bus transit that helped to integrate local schools.
“He was a man of tremendous courage,” the NAACP said in a statement.
His firm, founded in 1964, was the first racially integrated law practice in the southern U.S. state, according to the Charlotte Observer.
“He believed that regardless of one’s position, status, race, creed, color, religion or gender, everyone has an obligation to ensure equality for all,” Attorney James Ferguson, a partner at Chambers’ firm, told a news conference on Saturday.
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