HIGGINBOTHAM, ALOYISUS LEON, JR.
A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. was an attorney, a scholar, and a federal judge. His distinguished
judicial career culminated in his attaining the
rank of chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit.
Higginbotham was born February 25, 1928,
in Trenton, New Jersey. Although he attended
segregated public schools, his mother was
determined that he would receive the same
opportunities available to white students. “She
knew that education was the sole passport to a
better life,” he said. No African–American stu-
dent had been admitted to the academic high
school program in Trenton because Latin, a
requirement for the program, was not offered at
the black elementary schools. But Higgin-
botham’s mother fought for her son’s right to
enroll and finally convinced the principal to
allow him into the program.Higginbotham had
no doubt that his mother’s advocacy made a
difference in the outcome of his life. “When I
see students who went to [elementary school]
with me now working as elevator operators or
on street maintenance,” he said, “I often wonder
what their future would have been if the school
had offered Latin.”
After finishing high school, Higginbotham
decided to become an engineer and enrolled at
Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana.
A winter spent sleeping in an unheated attic
with 11 other African–American students
caused him to rethink his career goals. “One
night, as the temperature was close to zero, I felt
that I could suffer the personal indignities and
denigration no longer,” he wrote in the preface
to his book, In the Matter of Color: The Colonial
Period (1978). He spoke to the university presi-
dent, who told him the law did not require the
university to “let colored students in the dorm.”
Higginbotham was advised to accept the situa-
tion or leave. “How could it be that the law
would not permit twelve good kids to sleep in a
warm dormitory?” he wondered. He decided
then and there to abandon engineering and pur-
sue a career in law.
Higginbotham left Purdue to attend Antioch
College, in Ohio, where he studied sociology,
earning his bachelor of arts degree in 1949. He
went on to Yale Law School, and received his
bachelor of laws degree in 1952. Another inci-
dent that helped galvanize his commitment to
racial equality occurred shortly after his gradua-
tion from Yale. He was a job candidate for a
prominent Philadelphia law firm that did not
know he was black until he arrived for the inter-
view. Although the partner who spoke with him
