William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. was born in the Germantown district of Philadelphia
on July 7, 1920. He was the second of three children born to William Thaddeus
and Laura Beatrice Mason Coleman, director of the Quaker-supported Germantown
boys club for 40 years. Introduced by his father to some of the country's greatest
black leaders, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall, young William,
from the time he was 10 or 12-years old, became enamored of the law profession
and slipped into Philadelphia courtrooms to absorb as much as he could.
Coleman attended a racially segregated elementary school before entering Germantown
High School, a predominantly white school with only seven black students. Despite
its atmosphere of bigotry (rather than permit his participation on the all-white
swimming team, school officials cut the sport until he graduated), Coleman earned
excellent grades at Germantown High that earned his admission to University of
Pennsylvania, from which he received his B.A. degree summa cum laude. Fulfilling
his childhood dream of becoming a lawyer, he entered the Harvard Law School in
1941. Coleman's matriculation at Harvard was interrupted in 1943 by service in
the U.S. Air Corp during World War II which prevented Coleman from gaining his
degree promptly, but gave him some valuable on-the-job training instead. Assigned
as defense counsel in 18 court-martial proceedings, he won 17 acquittals, including
one of two convictions that was subsequently reversed.
After the war, Coleman returned to Harvard to earn his LL.B. degree magna cum
laude 1946, graduating first in his class and becoming the first black ever to
serve on the board of editors of the Harvard Law Review. He was also
the recipient of the Joseph E. Beale Prize.
He began his law career in 1947 as a law secretary to the late Judge Herbert F.
Goodrich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In 1948 he became
a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter, becoming
the first black to serve in that capacity for the nation's highest court. After
Coleman's clerkship with Justice Frankfurter ended in 1949, Coleman joined the
eminent New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison as an
associate. After three years, Coleman was recruited in 1952 to join Dilworth,
Paxson, Kalish, & Levy, renamed Dilworth, Paxson, Kalish, & Levy &
Coleman upon his rise to senior partner and head of the Litigation Department.
An ardent civil rights activist and public servant, Coleman was co-author of the
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund's (LDF) brief on Brown v. Board of Education,
helped to defend freedom riders and other civil rights workers, and successfully
argued cases that compelled the admission of blacks to previously segregated universities
and established the constitutionality of interracial marriages. In addition to
service as Secretary of Transportation in the Ford Administration, Coleman has
held a number of other public service and national community positions, including,
among others: Chairman of the Board of the LDF and membership on the U.S. Delegation
to the 24th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, the National Commission
on Productivity, and the President's Commission on the Assassination of President
Kennedy.
Mr. Coleman is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Harvard Law
School Outstanding Alumnae Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's
highest civilian award, LDF's Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award, and
France's Officer of the National Order of the Legion of Honor. Among others, Mr.
Coleman has served on the board of directors of Washington Mutual, J.P. Morgan
Chase and the I.B.M. Corporation. A member of bars of Pennsylvania, the District
of Columbia, the Supreme Court of the United States and many of the appellate
and trial courts of the federal court system, he holds honorary degrees from some
of the nation's leading universities including Harvard University, Williams College,
Yale University, Central Michigan University, Swarthmore College, Howard University,
Columbia University and Bard College.
He is married to the former Lovida Mae Hardin of New Orleans, Louisiana, and has
three children, two of whom are practicing lawyers.
