Robert L. Carter

Robert L. Carter served as Assistant Special Counsel for the NAACP from 1945 to 1956 when he was appointed the organization's General Counsel. Carter was counsel for the plaintiff in the landmark McClaurin v. Oklahoma case in 1950, and he helped argue the Brown v. Board of Education case before the U. S. Supreme Court. Carter secured the involvement of Kenneth Clark as a witness on the psychological damage segregation caused in children. One of Carter's most important cases after Brown was NAACP v. Alabama (1958) which struck down the massive resistance laws in Virginia and Alabama targeting the NAACP for disbarment and investigation. Carter left the NAACP to enter private practice in 1969, and in 1972 President Richard Nixon appointed him to a federal judgeship in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.