Leon Ransom—D.C. rights attorney and activist: 1947 ca.
Leon A. Ransom, educator and black liberation activist is shown in an undated photograph circa 1947.
Ransom was an unheralded civil rights attorney who was a contemporary of Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall in using the law to advance black civil rights.
He argued numerous cases, both in private practice and as a member of the N.A.A.C.P.'s legal staff. Among the subjects of Ransom's cases are educational and salary discrimination, jury exclusion, and race riots.
Ransom was born in Zanesville, Ohio in 1898 and graduated from Wilberforce University with a bachelor of arts degree in 1920 and from Ohio State University in 1927. He attended Harvard on a fellowship and graduated in 1935.
His widow later recounted that he became a lawyer as “a form of protest” against the racial discrimination he saw all around him in Chicago where he lived from 1920-25.
He practiced law in Columbus Ohio for several years before his appointment at Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C. as an assistant professor in 1933.
By 1941 he had moved up to acting dean of the laws school after William H. Hastie moved on.
During his time at Howard he was a civil rights activist as well as an educator.
He tendered a bitter resignation letter to Mordecai Johnson, Howard’s president, after he was passed over for the permanent job of dean of the law school in 1943.
He went to work for the NAACP legal department shortly afterward and chaired the Washington, D.C. Committee for Racial Democracy.
Among his activities and prominent legal cases:
In 1937 he was one of the so-called “left-wingers” that challenged a “do-nothing” faction of the D.C. NAACP;, setting up their own rival chapter when they were not permitted to run candidates. A letter at the time by Edward P. Lovett “for the protesting members” called for a single “militant effective branch of the NAACP in Washington.”
He was a leader of a picket line at the National Theatre in 1947 to protest Jim Crow at the venue. President Truman and his wife crossed the picket line to see “Blossom Time.”
He, along with Thurgood Marshall, successfully sued Montgomery County, Md. to equalize black teacher salaries with those of white teachers.
When police arrested a People’s Drug Store picket during the “Don’t buy where you can’t work” campaign of the New Negro Alliance, Ransom was one of the attorneys that successfully challenged the picketing ban. This occurred after the successful case against Sanitary (Safeway) Grocery.
He was one of four NAACP attorneys that successfully challenged Jim Crow on interstate buses in 1946 in the Irene Morgan case. Most southern states refused to acknowledge this U.S. Supreme Court ruling resulting in the “freedom riders” 15 years later. Transit buses between Washington, D.C. and Virginal, however, did desegregate in 1946 following the ruling.
He was one of the attorneys handling Gardner Bishop’s first case challenging racial segregation in District of Columbia schools in 1948. Though the case was lost, the ruling against it provided the legal avenue for the successful Bolling v. Sharpe case.
Ransom died suddenly at age 57 in 1954
For more information and elated images of other random radicals, see flic.kr/s/aHske413N1
Photo by Scurlock Studios. The image is housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star Collection.
Leon Ransom—D.C. rights attorney and activist: 1947 ca.
Leon A. Ransom, educator and black liberation activist is shown in an undated photograph circa 1947.
Ransom was an unheralded civil rights attorney who was a contemporary of Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall in using the law to advance black civil rights.
He argued numerous cases, both in private practice and as a member of the N.A.A.C.P.'s legal staff. Among the subjects of Ransom's cases are educational and salary discrimination, jury exclusion, and race riots.
Ransom was born in Zanesville, Ohio in 1898 and graduated from Wilberforce University with a bachelor of arts degree in 1920 and from Ohio State University in 1927. He attended Harvard on a fellowship and graduated in 1935.
His widow later recounted that he became a lawyer as “a form of protest” against the racial discrimination he saw all around him in Chicago where he lived from 1920-25.
He practiced law in Columbus Ohio for several years before his appointment at Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C. as an assistant professor in 1933.
By 1941 he had moved up to acting dean of the laws school after William H. Hastie moved on.
During his time at Howard he was a civil rights activist as well as an educator.
He tendered a bitter resignation letter to Mordecai Johnson, Howard’s president, after he was passed over for the permanent job of dean of the law school in 1943.
He went to work for the NAACP legal department shortly afterward and chaired the Washington, D.C. Committee for Racial Democracy.
Among his activities and prominent legal cases:
In 1937 he was one of the so-called “left-wingers” that challenged a “do-nothing” faction of the D.C. NAACP;, setting up their own rival chapter when they were not permitted to run candidates. A letter at the time by Edward P. Lovett “for the protesting members” called for a single “militant effective branch of the NAACP in Washington.”
He was a leader of a picket line at the National Theatre in 1947 to protest Jim Crow at the venue. President Truman and his wife crossed the picket line to see “Blossom Time.”
He, along with Thurgood Marshall, successfully sued Montgomery County, Md. to equalize black teacher salaries with those of white teachers.
When police arrested a People’s Drug Store picket during the “Don’t buy where you can’t work” campaign of the New Negro Alliance, Ransom was one of the attorneys that successfully challenged the picketing ban. This occurred after the successful case against Sanitary (Safeway) Grocery.
He was one of four NAACP attorneys that successfully challenged Jim Crow on interstate buses in 1946 in the Irene Morgan case. Most southern states refused to acknowledge this U.S. Supreme Court ruling resulting in the “freedom riders” 15 years later. Transit buses between Washington, D.C. and Virginal, however, did desegregate in 1946 following the ruling.
He was one of the attorneys handling Gardner Bishop’s first case challenging racial segregation in District of Columbia schools in 1948. Though the case was lost, the ruling against it provided the legal avenue for the successful Bolling v. Sharpe case.
Ransom died suddenly at age 57 in 1954
For more information and elated images of other random radicals, see flic.kr/s/aHske413N1
Photo by Scurlock Studios. The image is housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star Collection.