TO THE CHAPTER INVISIBLE
The Honorable George N. Leighton 1912–2018 Iconic Attorney & Judge, Civil Rights Advocate and Legal Legend
By Aaron Williams
since he never attended high school. To help with his tuition and expenses, he worked while at Howard as the Assistant to the Dean of Men. He made the Dean’s Honor Roll his freshman year. Howard University bestowed in 1940 a bachelor’s degree to Leighton from its College of Liberal Arts. He graduated magna cum laude from Howard and earned membership in Phi Beta Kappa ® . Leighton applied and was accepted into the Harvard Law School in 1940 but left in 1942 to enter the U.S. Army. He served in the Pacific during WWII as a second lieutenant in the segregated 93 rd Infantry Division rising to the rank of captain prior his honorable discharge in 1945. He returned to Harvard Law School and graduated with an LL.B. degree in the fall of 1946. After law school, he moved to Chicago. He said he picked the Windy City “… for a very simple reason. I found out that Chicago, IL had the second largest Afri- can American population in the United States and Chicago was the only place in America in 1946 that had a Black person (Oscar De Priest) in Congress… and that a community that could send one of its own to Congress was the place I wanted to be.” According to Leighton, other than his education, the only item he possessed to jumpstart his legal career was a letter of introduction to past Grand Polemarch Earl B. Dickerson (Beta 1913), a well- known attorney in Chicago during that time, written by Ms. Sadie T. M. Alex- ander, an attorney, and a Delta Sigma Theta Sorority ® founder. After two years as Assistant State Attorney General of Illinois, Leighton worked in private prac- tice focusing in civil rights, fair housing, school desegregation, voting rights and criminal law. In 1951, with Brothers Loring B. Moore (Iota 1919) and Wil- liam R. Ming, Jr. (Iota 1930), Leighton organized the law firm, Moore, Ming & Leighton which grew to be one of the largest African-American law firms in
after Leighton’s pass- ing: “He was one of the greatest lawyers of last 100 years. He went to Alabama to fight for voting rights in 1949; and then went to Mississippi in the 1950s to fight to integrate grand juries — and before that he could not rent an office in the Loop when he moved here (Chicago) in 1946!” Born George Neves Leitão on October 22, 1912 in New Bedford, MA, Leighton was the son of Anna Silva
P resident Barack Obama wrote in 2008, “The Rev. Martin Luther King once said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ Reverend King was right, but it does not bend on its own. It takes people like George Leigh- ton to bend it. I thank you for doing just that.” What an extraordinary life lived considering meager beginnings weeding cranberry bogs as a child with his sib- lings in his native Massachusetts: a man with no formal education pass the sixth grade who achieved academically and professionally. The son of itinerant farm laborers, Leighton worked hard to realize his childhood dream of practicing law. George N. Leighton was a distinguished attorney for six decades, an Illinois State Judge, a U.S. Federal Judge and a pas- sionate chess player. Brother George Neves Leighton transitioned to the Chapter Invisible on June 6, 2018 at the age of 105 from pneumonia. At the time of his passing, he was the oldest living member of Kappa Alpha Psi ® . He was a 1938 initiate of the Howard University Chapter, the Xi of Kappa Alpha Psi ® . Chicago attorney Jeff Coleman com- mented in a Chicago Sun-Times article
Garcia and Antonio Neves Leitão who were natives of the Portuguese terri- tory of Cape Verde Islands located 400 miles from the coast of Senegal. He was raised primarily in New Bedford and at- tended grade schools on Cape Cod and in New Bedford. During this time, his last name changed to Leighton due to the difficulty his teachers had correctly pronouncing “Leitão.” He completed the sixth grade at Roosevelt Junior High School but left school to work on an oil tanker to help his family financially. He did not return to public school and never attended high school. His lack of formal secondary education did not de- ter young Leighton as he had a lifelong affinity to reading and learning. He read extensively from books, spent hours in the public library while attending night school. In 1936, Leighton entered a local essay contest where a prize of $200 each went to the top two finishers. The essay win- ners could apply the prize money toward tuition to attend college. He won one of the two scholarship awards and subse- quently applied to attend historic How- ard University. The university accepted Leighton as an “Unclassified Student”
Publishing achievement for more than 100 years
THE JOURNAL SUMMER ISSUE | 59
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