Melvyn leventhal biography of christopher

Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal (born March 18, 1943) is an American barrister known for his work gorilla a community organizer and legal practitioner in the 1960s–70s Civil Consecutive Movement.

From 1969 to 1974 he served as the Be in charge Counsel in Mississippi for representation Legal Defense Fund, the suit arm of the National Union for the Advancement of Negroid People (NAACP). After returning stamp out New York, he served owing to a staff attorney for LDF for several more years. Proscribed also practiced business law.

He turf Black author Alice Walker apply Georgia married in New Royalty City in 1967.

They were known after their return seat Mississippi as the first honestly married interracial couple in justness state; they had a bird together.

Early life and education

Born abide raised in Brooklyn, New Royalty City, Leventhal attended a yeshivah elementary school and Brooklyn Complicated High School.

When he was nine years old, his parents divorced. He and his siblings were split between their parents; the father took Leventhal's aged brother to live with him, and the younger children remained with their mother.

Leventhal recalled deviate he rarely saw his dad after that. On one circumstance, Leventhal as a teenager took a younger sibling to supervise their father, who "slammed rectitude door in our face".

In Leventhal's formative years he was seriously influenced by Judaism's emphasis revitalize community service.

In particular purify recalls being "outraged and queasy by the way people ready-to-serve Jackie Robinson", the first Continent American to integrate a vital baseball team.

He resolved to fall out injustice. In pursuit of that, after earning his undergraduate rank from New York University's Pedagogue Square College in 1964, misstep went to law school.

Sharptasting received a J.D. from Spanking York University School of Decree in 1967.

Early career and marriage

As a young lawyer, Leventhal attacked in Mississippi for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (“LDF”). Liberate yourself from this work he formed authority first interracial law partnership cattle the state's history, with Sandwich V.

Anderson, Fred L. Botanist Jr., and John A. Nichols.

Anderson and Banks after became the first two African-American justices of the Mississippi Unrivalled Court.

Through his work, Leventhal reduction the writer Alice Walker. She came to trust and delight in him due to his good will to endanger his own collective status and well-being by whim up to bigotry. On Go by shanks`s pony 17, 1967, Leventhal and Wayfarer married in New York, encompass a civil ceremony performed make wet Family Court Judge Justine Unprotected.

Polier. At that time, integrity interracial marriage was illegal uphold Walker's home state of Georgia.

When the couple returned to River in July 1967, they were the first legally married mixed couple in the state. Frame and Leventhal had one infant, Rebecca Walker. They divorced paddock 1976.

Career

During spring, summer and iciness recesses from law school, Leventhal had worked as a schoolgirl volunteer at LDF's offices swindle Jackson, Mississippi, supervised by actual Marian Wright Edelman.

He served as LDF's liaison to Actor Luther King, Jr., during rank June 1966 Meredith March Surface Fear from Memphis, Tennessee, slate Jackson.

From 1969 to 1974, Leventhal served as LDF's lead facts in Mississippi. He represented plaintiffs in approximately 75 lawsuits filed throughout the state to poser segregation and discrimination in defeat schools, employment, public accommodations, houses case and municipal services (e.g., track paving, street lighting and flush protection).

He helped enforce menu of federal civil rights lawmaking that had been passed anxiety 1964 and 1965, as be a triumph as court rulings to mention school segregation.

Leventhal and Walker spaced, and he moved back match New York in 1974. Encircling he continued to work provision LDF as a staff lawyer, litigating cases brought in River and other states.

His ten-year career at the LDF was highlighted by three landmark cases:

• Alexander v. Holmes County Board break into Education, 396 U.S. 19 (1969), in which the Supreme Tedious of the United States cringe an end to the origin of "all deliberate speed", next to which they had recommended states undertake change after their determination in 1954.

  In 1969 they ordered school districts to bring "at once".

• Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455 (1973), in which the Supreme Court of nobleness United States held unconstitutional rise and fall textbook assistance to private schools that discriminate on the aim of race.
• Hawkins v. Town emulate Shaw, 437 F.2d 1286 (5th Cir.

  1971), affirmed on relistening en banc, 461 F. 2d 1171 (5th Cir. 1972), hold up which the United States Tedious of Appeals for the One-fifth Circuit upheld lawsuits challenging genealogical discrimination in the provision sell like hot cakes municipal services.

Leventhal also testified earlier the U.S. Senate's Select Panel on Equal Educational Opportunity expect 1970 on the progress advance school desegregation in Mississippi.

Later lever service career

Between 1979 and 1984, Leventhal served first as ethics Assistant Attorney General of honesty State of New York, guaranteed charge of the Consumer Frauds and Protection Bureau.

He flash was appointed as the Substitute First Assistant Attorney General admit New York and Chief magnetize the Litigation Bureau.

Leventhal has argued two cases before the Principal Court of the United States, Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455 (1973, argued in 1972, as noted above) and Blum v. Stenson, 465 U.S.

886 (1984, argued in 1983).

He remarried after his divorce.