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William A. Booker born in Arkansas in 1900 and was brother to attorney J.R. Booker. He was admitted to practice before the state supreme court on July 13, 1925. He was an early member of the first Arkansas branch of the NAACP in Little Rock in 1926. In 1930, when the brothers were practicing as Booker & Booker in Little Rock (Pulaski County), they joined with attorneys Scipio Jones and J.A. Hibbler in suing the Little Rock Democratic Central Committee on behalf of the Arkansas Negro Democratic Association for the right to vote in Democratic primaries. This same group, joined by Myles Hibbler and the NAACP (through attorney Thurgood Marshall) sued the Little Rock School District in 1942 on behalf of a Black teacher for equal pay with white teachers. William Booker died on August 1, 1966.

Sources: Judith Kilpatrick, “(EXTRA)Ordinary Men: African-American Lawyers and Civil Rights in Arkansas Before 1950,” 53 Ark. Law Rev. 299, 381 n630, 384, 391 (2000); Papers of the NAACP, Part 12, Reel 4, pp. 963-64 (Membership Record dtd 10/12/1926);

 

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