Spottswood William Robinson III

Who was Spottswood William Robinson III?

Spottswood William Robinson III was an educator, civil rights attorney and judge.

In the early 1950s, Robinson and his law-partner Oliver Hill litigated several civil rights lawsuits in Virginia. In 1951, Robinson and Hill took up the cause of the African American students at the segregated R.R. Moton High School in Farmville who had walked out of their dilapidated school. The subsequent lawsuit, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County which was consolidated with four other cases decided under Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954. In their arguments before the Court, Robinson made the first argument on behalf of the plaintiffs.

In 1966, Judge Robinson became the first African-American appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit when he was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson. He became the first African American to become Chief Judge of the District of Columbia Circuit Court.