Robert L. Carter
| Robert Lee Carter | |
|---|---|
United States District Judge Robert L. Carter
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| Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York | |
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In office December 31, 1986 – January 3, 2012 |
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| Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York | |
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In office July 25, 1972 – December 31, 1986 |
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| Appointed by | Richard Nixon |
| Preceded by | Thomas F. Croake |
| Succeeded by | Kenneth Conboy |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
March 11, 1917 Caryville, Florida, United States |
| Died | January 3, 2012 (aged 94) Manhattan, New York, United States |
| Spouse(s) | Gloria Spencer |
| Alma mater |
Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) (A.B., 1937) |
Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) (A.B., 1937)
Howard University School of Law (LL.B., 1940)
Robert Lee Carter (March 11, 1917 – January 3, 2012) was an American lawyer, civil rights activist and a United States District Judge.
Carter was born on March 11, 1917, in Caryville, Florida. As part of the Great Migration of southern blacks moving north, his mother Annie Martin Carter took him (just six weeks old) and his siblings to Newark, New Jersey, where his father, Robert L. Carter Sr., was working. However, his father died within a year. Nonetheless, the family stayed in Newark, and his mother worked as a laundress to support her family, helped by her eldest daughter, who worked as a seamstress until marrying when Carter was 12. Carter spent many hours at the local public library and attended public schools, including Newark's Barringer High School.
The family moved to East Orange during Carter's high school years, where Carter's activism began after he read that a state court had ruled against racially discriminatory practices such as that high school's only allowing black students to use the swimming pool on Fridays, and entered the pool with white students, defying a teacher's threats. The school chose to close down its pool rather than integrate it. Carter graduated at age 16 from East Orange High School after having skipped two grades.
He earned an undergraduate degree in political science from Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) and his LLB law degree from Howard University School of Law in 1940, both on scholarship and from predominantly black institutions. Carter earned his LLM from Columbia Law School in 1941, after writing an influential master's thesis that would later define the NAACP's legal strategy on the right to freedom of association under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
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