John Payton

John A. Payton (December 27, 1946 – March 22, 2012) was a well-known African-American civil rights attorney. In 2008, Payton was appointed the sixth president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund serving in that post until his death. Prior to this, he was a Partner at the law firm WilmerHale for twenty years.

Payton was tapped to be the lead counsel for the University of Michigan in defending its law and undergraduate schools' use of race in their admissions processes. For more than six years, Payton handled the two high-profile cases in the trial court and in the court of appeals, and argued Gratz v. Bollinger before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Payton grew up in Los Angeles, California, where he graduated from high school. He attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he became heavily involved in civil rights and anti-war protests. Payton was one of the founders of Pomona's Black Student Association. For three years, Payton served as an admissions officer at the Claremont Colleges, a position that he helped create to recruit black students. He graduated in 1973. He left the admissions position after receiving a Watson fellowship, which allowed him to study literature in West Africa for a year and, while abroad, he applied to law school.

After being accepted at and entering Harvard Law School, Payton worked on several civil rights cases and was a member of the editorial board for the Harvard Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review. He graduated from law school in 1977.

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