TO THE CHAPTER INVISIBLE
“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 Leighton to bend it. I thank you for doing just that.” the country. —President Barack Obama
Board of Directors of Grant Hospi- tal, Chicago, IL and United Church of Christ. He served two terms as president of the Chicago Branch of the N.A.A.C.P. He served for many years as a trustee of the University of Notre Dame. He served on Harvard Univer- sity’s Board of Overseers. He worked as chairman of the Illinois Advisory Committee for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He served as president of the Chicago Chapter of the Howard University Alumni Association. He was a member of the American Bar Association, the Inter-American Bar Association, the National Bar Associa- tion, the Massachusetts Bar Association, the Illinois State Bar Association, the Cook County Bar Association, the Na- tional Association of Defense Lawyers in Criminal Cases, and the Chicago Bar Association. In the Chicago Bar Association, Leighton was the first African American elected to its Board of Managers. In 2012, the 26 th and California Crimi- nal Courthouse nicknamed “26 th and Cal” was renamed to “The Honorable George N. Leighton Criminal Court Building.” Other honors for Leighton include in 2005, the New Bedford,
MA Post Office was renamed in his honor. The American Bar Association awarded Leighton the ABA Medal, the legal organization’s highest honor. The Cook County Bar Association named him the recipient of its 1964 Richard E. Westbrooks Award "For distinguished achievement and outstanding contri- bution to the legal profession." The John Marshall Law School established the George N. Leighton Equal Justice Award. Elmhurst College, Southeast- ern Massachusetts University and New England University School of Law each conferred Leighton honorary degrees of Doctor of Laws. He was named a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation from the State of Illinois. He is preceded in death by his wife of nearly 50 years, Virginia who died in 1992. The Honorable George N. Leighton is survived by two adult daughters, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. He is interred at Arlington National Cemetery in Arling- ton, VA. Grand Polemarch Thomas L. Battles, Jr. visited with Brother Leighton making him the first Centenarian to be pinned with 1912 membership badge.
Leighton had many high profile legal cases during his years as an attorney. In 1950, Leighton represented African American parents of school children in Harrisburg, IL in a proceeding which he filed in the United States District Court. As a result, an injunction was obtained ordering desegregation of the public schools of Harrisburg, IL. In 1951, Leighton was indicted for inciting a riot in Cicero, IL due to his advocacy of young African American family’s desire to live in an apartment in the town. In 1963, Leighton represented reputed mob crime family head Sam Giancana against the Federal Bureau of Investiga- tions (FBI). Leighton defended Gian- cana’s civil rights against the FBI’s ag- gressive and invasive “around the clock” surveillance of the Chicago mobster. Backed by then-Chicago mayor Rich- ard J. Daley, Leighton left his law firm in 1964 when he was elected a judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County. In 1969, the Supreme Court of Illinois assigned Judge Leighton to sit on the Appellate Court, First District, as Appellate Judge becoming the first African American to sit on that court. In 1970, Judge Leigh- ton was elected to a ten-year term as a Justice of the Illinois Appellate Court. U.S. President Gerald R. Ford in 1975 nominated Judge Leighton to serve as a United States District Judge, Northern District of Illinois. He was confirmed by the United States Senate in February of 1976. In 1987, he retired from the U.S. District Court and continued to work as an attorney at Earl L. Neal & Associ- ates into his late nineties. During this period, Judge Leighton also served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the John Marshall Law School where he taught classes in prisoner’s rights and criminal law and procedure until 2004. Affiliated with the Chicago (IL) Alumni Chapter and a life member of the N.A.A.C.P., he also held memberships in Harvard Law School Association,
60 | SUMMER ISSUE THE JOURNAL
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