Coleman, rights pioneer, is dead

WASHINGTON — William T. Coleman Jr., a civil rights lawyer from Philadelphia who prevailed in several landmark Supreme Court cases, broke a number of racial barriers in his own right and was the second African-American to lead a cabinet-level department, has died.

Transportation secretary during former President Gerald Ford’s administration and co-author of the main brief in Brown v. Board of Education, Coleman was a prominent Republican who advised presidents of both parties.

He died Friday at his home from complications related to Alzheimer's disease, his daughter, Lovida Coleman, said. He was 96.

Coleman’s service in Ford’s Cabinet from 1975 to 1977 was a high point in a career that included work on government commissions and partnerships in law firms in Philadelphia and Washington. William Thaddeus Coleman Jr.(photo) earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1941. He served in World War II and afterward he attended Harvard Law School. Coleman’s best-known civil rights work was on a series of cases that were combined into Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court unanimously declared in 1954 that school segregation is unconstitutional.

He was co-counsel in the 1964 case, Loving v. Virginia, in which the Supreme Court struck down the ban on interracial marriages.

Former President Bill Clinton awarded Coleman the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 1995.Coleman is survived by his wife, three children and four grandchildren.