A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.
Aloysius Leon Higginbotham Jr. (February 25, 1928 – December 14, 1998) was an American civil rights advocate, historian, presidential adviser, and federal court judge. From 1990 to 1991, he served as chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Originally nominated to the bench by President Kennedy in 1963, Higginbotham was the seventh African-American Article III judge appointed in the United States, and the first African-American United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He was elevated to the Third Circuit in 1977, serving as a federal judge for nearly 30 years in all. In 1995, President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Higginbotham used the name "Leon" informally. Early life and education Higginbotham was born on February 25, 1928, in Ewing Township, a suburb of Trenton, New Jersey. His mother, Emma Lee Higginbotham, was a maid, and his father, Aloyisus Leon Higginbotham Sr., was a factory worker. Higginbotham was raised in a largely African-American neighborhood, and attended a segregated grammar school. Higginbotham attended Lincoln School, a segregated high school in Trenton. Before Higginbotham attended, no black student had been put on the academic track (which was a significant step towards attending college), because Latin, a requirement for the program, was not taught at the black elementary schools. Higginbotham's mother convinced the principal at the junior high school to enroll him in a second-year Latin course, even though he had never studied first year Latin. To ensure that he was able to pass the required classes, the junior high Latin teacher offered to tutor him at her home during the summer. Higginbotham's family was of modest economic means, so he worked while attending school, mowing lawns, shoveling snow, and working as a bus boy at the Stacy Trent hotel. While in high school, Higginbotham manipulated his birth certificate in order to get working papers at 15, a year before the law allowed, so that he could work in a pottery factory shoveling clay. Undergraduate education At 16 Higginbotham enrolled in Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana. He chose Purdue because it admitted black students; was cheaper, at that time, than Rutgers University; and offered tuition discounts for good academic performance. Higginbotham was also interested in Purdue because he wanted to be an engineer, and Purdue was known as an engineering school. Higginbotham entered Purdue as a freshman in 1944. At the time, the student body was composed of approximately 6,000 white students, and 12 black students. Although eligible for admission, black students were not permitted to live in the dormitories. Higginbotham and the other 11 black students were placed in a building called International House, which was the only building in which blacks could live in West Lafayette. The students slept in the attic, which was unheated. Higginbotham sought a meeting with the University President, Edward C. Elliott, to ask permission for the students to sleep in a section of one of the heated