CHUCK MORGAN

We’ve lost a fine attorney in the New Year. Charles Morgan, Jr. died Thursday at his home in Destin, FL of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 78.

The day after four black Sunday-school girls were killed in a Birmingham church bombing (1963), Chuck Morgan spoke at the Young Men's Business luncheon, accusing the city's white community of complicity in the murders. Driven out of town by death threats from the KKK within a year, the American Civil Liberties Union asked Chuck to open a Southern Regional Office in Atlanta. He sued for integrated prisons and juries, legislative reapportionment and voting rights, argued the "one man, one vote" principle that redrew political maps. He successfully defended Muhammad Ali in his conscientious objector case.

The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture said Chuck was “involved in much of the litigation that altered political and social life of the South.” In 1966 he successfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Julian Bond, the black political leader refused a seat in the Georgia legislature because of an anti-Vietnam War statement. "He was a giant who remade the South through the courtroom as Martin Luther King, Jr. remade it through marching feet," said Bond, now chairman of the NAACP's national board.

I met Chuck in 1972 when he became head of the ACLU Washington Office. Under his leadership ACLU was the first organization to call for the impeachment of Richard Nixon and represented plaintiffs in the Watergate break-in. Our work to change the mindset of America and the Senate led to Nixon's resignation. We attacked government secrecy at the highest levels.

Chuck found time to author a few books, including a chapter on race relations in “Playing Around: The Million Dollar Infield Goes to Florida.” In 1974 a group of mostly authors, "average age forty-one, average condition deplorable" that had a combined income of $1 million joined the Pittsburgh Pirates for spring training. That was the period of stretch knit uniforms that weren’t too flattering on a sedentary attorney.

Working for Chuck Morgan was interesting, exciting and at times unorthodox. Those of us who knew him best know that the American people have lost an eloquent and fearless advocate.