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Poll: Almost half in U.S. creationist
RICHMOND, Va., Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Renowned Virginia civil rights lawyer Oliver W. Hill has died at age 100.
Hill died Sunday at his home in Richmond from a heart ailment, The Washington Post reported Monday.
In 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded Hill the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, for Hill’s persistent attack on segregation in the United States.
Hill was the lead lawyer on a case later incorporated into Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated schools unlawful.
Hill vigorously worked against the "separate but equal" system of public facilities created in 1896 by the U.S. Supreme Court by filing countless lawsuits to compel change in voting rights, jury selection, public transportation and worker protection.
A 1931 graduate of Howard University, Hill graduated two years later from its law school, finishing second in class rank to Thurgood Marshall, who became a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
Hill’s activism led to so many threats his family installed flood lights around the outside of their house after a cross was burned on the lawn in 1955.
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