A child of the Jim Crow South who became a civil rights activist, state senator, and the first Black federal judge in Alabama, Clemon is retired from the bench but continues to advocate tirelessly for justice and speak out fearlessly on public affairs.
When U.W. Clemon ’68 graduated in 1965 as valedictorian of Miles College, a historically Black school on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama, he wanted to study law. But he could not attend the University of Alabama School of Law, which did not admit Black students, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So he applied to Columbia Law School, secure in the knowledge his legal education would be fully funded, despite his family’s modest means.
“Yes, the state of Alabama paid for me to go to one of the nation’s best- known law schools,” Clemon says with delight, explaining it was a common practice for Southern states to pay for Black students to attend out-of-state law schools so they could keep their own graduate schools segregated.
Columbia was his first choice but not an obvious one. “Ordinarily, it would have been unthinkable for me to be admitted because I was a graduate of an unaccredited Black college,” says Clemon, noting that Miles College had lost its accreditation because its library lacked enough books. But Clemon had ambition and connections. His college’s president, Dr. Lucius H. Pitts, whom he’d gotten to know through their shared civil...
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