III 

116TH CONGRESS 

2D SESSION S. CON. RES. 37 

Honoring the life and work of Louis Lorenzo Redding, whose lifelong dedication to civil rights and service stand as an example of leadership for 

all people. 

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 

FEBRUARY 27, 2020 

Mr. COONS (for himself, Mr. RUBIO, and Mr. CARPER) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the 

Judiciary 

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 

Honoring the life and work of Louis Lorenzo Redding, whose 

lifelong dedication to civil rights and service stand as 

an example of leadership for all people. 

Whereas Louis Lorenzo Redding (referred to in this preamble 

as ‘‘Louis L. Redding’’) was born on October 25, 1901, 

in Alexandria, Virginia, the eldest of 5 children born to 

Lewis Alfred and Mary Ann Holmes Redding; 

Whereas Louis L. Redding was an educator, attorney, and 

lifelong activist who worked on civil rights and educational issues; 

Whereas Louis L. Redding graduated from Howard High 

School in 1919, which, at that time, was the only public 

high school for African-American students in Delaware; 


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Whereas Louis L. Redding received a bachelor’s degree from 

Brown University in 1923; 

Whereas, while at Brown University, Louis L. Redding and 

7 other men established a chapter of the Alpha Phi Alpha 

fraternity in Providence, Rhode Island; 

Whereas, in 1923, Louis L. Redding was the first African 

American awarded the prestigious William Gaston Prize 

for excellence in oratory and, as a result, delivered a commencement speech at Brown University; 

Whereas Louis L. Redding became an English instructor and 

the vice principal of Fessenden Academy outside of 

Ocala, Florida, the oldest continuously operated school 

originally for African-American students in Florida; 

Whereas Louis L. Redding left Fessenden Academy to teach 

English in the high school division of Morehouse College, 

a historically Black college in Atlanta, Georgia; 

Whereas, after 2 years of teaching, Louis L. Redding enrolled 

in Harvard Law School in 1925; 

Whereas, in 1926, as a law student at Harvard Law School, 

Louis L. Redding was ejected from the Wilmington, 

Delaware, municipal court while protesting segregation of 

the courtroom; 

Whereas that municipal court was the first court in Wilmington, Delaware, to desegregate its gallery; 

Whereas Louis L. Redding graduated from Harvard Law 

School in 1928 as the only African American in a class 

of about 200 students; 

Whereas, in 1929, Louis L. Redding became the first African 

American to pass the Delaware bar; 


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Whereas Louis L. Redding remained the only African-American lawyer in Delaware for 26 years; 

Whereas, in 1949, Louis L. Redding was admitted to the 

Delaware Bar Association, an organization from which 

Louis L. Redding had been excluded for 20 years after 

having passed the Delaware bar; 

Whereas, in 1950, Louis L. Redding and Jack Greenberg, a 

lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational 

Fund, filed the case of Parker v. University of Delaware 

to protest the segregated college system in Delaware; 

Whereas, in August 1950, Chancellor Collins Seitz ruled in 

Parker v. University of Delaware, 75 A.2d 225 (Del. Ch. 

1950), that, under Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 

(1896), the State of Delaware violated the Constitution 

of the United States by offering a separate but not equal 

education in the State college and university system; 

Whereas, in 1951, Louis L. Redding and Jack Greenberg 

filed— 

(1) Belton v. Gebhart, a case that concerned the desegregation of high schools; and 

(2) Bulah v. Gebhart, a case that concerned the desegregation of elementary schools; 

Whereas, in 1952, the Belton and Bulah cases were consolidated in the Delaware Court of Chancery, where, in 

Belton v. Gebhart, 87 A.2d 862 (Del. Ch. 1952), Chancellor Collins Seitz ordered the Delaware State Board of 

Education to open all schools in Delaware to African 

Americans; 

Whereas the Delaware State Board of Education appealed 

the decision of Chancellor Collins Seitz to the Supreme 

Court of Delaware, which upheld the decision of the 


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Chancellor in Gebhart v. Belton, 91 A.2d 137 (Del. 

1952); 

Whereas the case then came before the Supreme Court of the 

United States on a writ of certiorari to the Supreme 

Court of Delaware; 

Whereas Louis L. Redding and Jack Greenberg argued the 

case alongside Thurgood Marshall, the first AfricanAmerican Justice of the Supreme Court of the United 

States, as the last of a group of 5 school desegregation 

cases heard and decided by the Supreme Court of the 

United States in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), and Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 

U.S. 497 (1954); 

Whereas, on May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court of the United 

States held in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 

347 U.S. 483 (1954), that separate educational facilities 

for racial minorities violated the Equal Protection Clause 

of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United 

States, thus holding that school segregation was unconstitutional; 

Whereas, on February 21, 1961, Louis L. Redding argued to 

the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of 

Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority that a private 

company with a relationship to a government agency was 

in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th 

Amendment to the Constitution of the United States if 

the private company refused to provide service to a customer on the basis of race; 

Whereas, in April 1961, the Supreme Court of the United 

States established the principle of State action in Burton 

v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U.S. 715 (1961), 


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and ruled that a private entity may not discriminate on 

the basis of race if the State has approved, encouraged, 

or facilitated the relevant private conduct; 

Whereas, in 1965, Louis L. Redding became a public defender for the State of Delaware and fought for the 

rights of poor clients for nearly 20 years thereafter; 

Whereas, in 1984, Louis L. Redding retired after 55 years 

of practicing law; 

Whereas Louis L. Redding was a member of many national 

organizations, including— 

(1) the National Bar Association; 

(2) the National Association for the Advancement of 

Colored People; 

(3) the National Lawyers Guild; and 

(4) the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee; 

Whereas Louis L. Redding was awarded the Martin Luther 

King, Jr. Memorial Award by the National Education Association and an honorary Doctor of Law degree from 

Brown University; 

Whereas the University of Delaware established the Louis L. 

Redding Chair for the Study of Law and Public Policy 

in the School of Education; 

Whereas Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Kluger described Louis L. Redding as a man who fought, largely 

alone, for the civil rights and liberties of Black Delawareans; 

Whereas former Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman, Jr., stated that the giants of the civil rights movement were Houston Hastings, Louis L. Redding, and 

Thurgood Marshall; 


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Whereas, on September 29, 1998, Louis L. Redding died at 

the age of 96 in Lima, Pennsylvania; 

Whereas Louis L. Redding broke down barriers and paved 

the way for countless African-American lawyers to follow 

in his footsteps, including— 

(1) Theophilus Nix, Sr., the second African American to pass the Delaware bar exam; 

(2) Joshua W. Martin III, the first African-American president of the Delaware Bar Association; 

(3) Frank H. Hollis, the first African-American attorney to represent corporate clients in Delaware; 

(4) Paulette Sullivan Moore, the first African-American woman to pass the Delaware bar exam; 

(5) Leonard L. Williams, the second African-American judge in Delaware; 

(6) Haile L. Alford, the first African-American female judge in Delaware; 

(7) Arlene Coppadge, the first African-American female judge appointed to the Delaware Family Court; 

(8) Gregory M. Sleet, the first African American to 

be appointed as the United States Attorney for the District of Delaware and the first African-American judge to 

serve on the United States District Court for the District 

of Delaware; 

(9) Alex J. Smalls, the first African-American chief 

judge of the Delaware Court of Common Pleas; and 

(10) Tamika Montgomery-Reeves, the first AfricanAmerican Vice Chancellor of the Delaware Court of 

Chancery and the first African-American justice to serve 

on the Supreme Court of Delaware; and 

Whereas Louis L. Redding is remembered as an individual 

who figured prominently in the struggle for desegregation 


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and as a lawyer who never lost a desegregation case: 

Now, therefore, be it 

1 Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives 

2 concurring), That Congress honors the life and work of 

3 Louis Lorenzo Redding, a civil servant whose lifelong dedi4 cation to justice and equality stand as an outstanding ex5 ample of leadership for all people. 

Æ 


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