HAYES, GEORGE E. C.
George E. C. Hayes was an attorney and CIVIL RIGHTS activist, and a member of the team of lawyers who argued the landmark SCHOOL DESEGREGATION cases before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954.
Hayes was born July 1, 1894, in Richmond,
and lived most of his life in Washington, D.C.,
where he attended public schools. He graduated
from Brown University, in Providence, in 1915
and received his law degree from Howard Uni-
versity in 1918.While at Howard, he attained one
of the highest academic averages on record there.
Hayes’s involvement in the burgeoning CIVIL
RIGHTS MOVEMENT began in the 1940s. As a
member of the District of Columbia Board of
Education from 1945 to 1949, he worked to
desegregate the schools in the nation’s capital.
Through his efforts, he met the National Associ-
ation for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) lawyers who were mounting desegrega-
tion battles in other states. Their work culmi-
nated in the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark
decision in BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION,
347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954).
Hayes was one of five NAACP lawyers, including
THURGOOD MARSHALL and James Nabrit, Jr.,
who convinced the High Court that SEGREGA-
TION in public schools was unconstitutional.
The Brown decision, repudiating the long-
established “separate-but-equal” doctrine,
marked the beginning of the end of segregation
in all public accommodations. After the decision
was handed down, Hayes and the other NAACP
lawyers continued to press for immediate deseg-
regation and urged the Court not to grant the
states’ appeals for a delay in implementation of
the changes.
In 1954, Hayes clashed with Senator JOSEPH
R. MCCARTHY, a Wisconsin Republican who
headed the Senate Subcommittee on Investiga-
tions.McCarthy, looking into possible Commu-
nist infiltration of the ARMED SERVICES, accused
Annie Lee Moss, a civilian employee of the Army
Signal Corps, of Communist affiliation. Hayes
defended Moss, who repeatedly denied the alle-
gations against her. He sharply criticized
McCarthy’s investigative methods and presump-
tion that Moss was guilty. Ultimately, Moss was
cleared of the charges, and the secretary of
defense restored her to a position with the Army.
Hayes has been described as independent
and a “quiet pioneer.”He was a lifelong Republi-
can, choosing an unusual affiliation for an
African–American civil rights activist. In 1955,
President DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER appointed
him to a post on the District of Columbia Pub-
lic Utilities Commission, and Hayes thus
became the first African American in nearly one
hundred years to serve in a municipal agency in
the District of Columbia. In 1962, the District of
Columbia Bar Association named him to its
board of directors, making him the first African
American to hold office in that group.
Hayes had open and sometimes bitter differ-
ences with the younger, more militant activists
who assumed leadership of the civil rights
movement in the early 1960s. In 1966, they crit-
icized him for accepting membership on the
previously segregated board of directors of the
Metropolitan Washington Board of Trade, one
of the District of Columbia’s most conservative
groups. As Howard University counsel, he
advised and assisted his friend Nabrit, then pres-
ident of Howard, in his handling of the black
power student uprising on the campus in 1967.
Hayes was highly respected among his col-
leagues, who knew him to be calm, diligent,
modest, and unassuming. He was noted for his
elegance in language, manner, and dress, and he
projected an image of intelligence and confi-
dence. In addition to holding a long tenure as
counsel to Howard University, Hayes acted as
counsel to the NAACP for many years. He died
