Counsel for the Situation

“Bill Coleman’s story is one that younger generations should mark and inwardly digest, lest they forget the pioneers who helped to make a better America possible. That story also shows us something important about the legal profession, helping us understand how in the mid-twentieth century an individual could become, at one and the same time, a great lawyer, a wise statesman, and a leader in the fight for equal rights.”—From the foreword by Justice Stephen BreyerBill Coleman has spent a lifetime opening doors and breaking down barriers. He has been an eyewitness to history; moreover, he has made history. This is his inspiring story, in his own words.Americans of color faced daunting barriers in the 1940s. Despite graduating first in his class at Harvard Law and clerking for Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Coleman was shut out of major East Coast law firms. But as he writes, “The times, they were a’changing.” He not only benefitted from that change—he helped propel it, by way of dogged determination, undeniable intellect, and stellar accomplishment.• Coleman was the first American of color to clerk for the Supreme Court.• He was the first American of color to join a major American law firm.• He served as senior counsel to the Warren Commission, investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy.• His legal work with Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund helped produce the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.• In 1975, he was appointed Secretary of Transportation by President Ford.• In 1995, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton.At his professional core, Bill is a lawyer—fiercely proud of the legal profession’s responsibilities in a democratic society and free economy and grateful for the opportunities it has afforded him in the court room, the board room, and the corridors of power. It is through this prism that he relates his own story—his life and the law.Coleman strives to be what Louis Brandeis described as a “counsel for the situation”—an advocate able to take on major matters in a variety of legal disciplines while upholding the highest traditions of justice and the public interest. The result speak for themselves, and in this immensely entertaining chronicle, the Counsel for the Situation speaks for himself.