There When We Needed Him

About

Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said of Wiley Austin Branton that he “devoted his entire life to fighting for his own people.” There When We Needed Him is the story of that fight, which began with Branton’s being one of the first black students at the University of Arkansas Law School and which took him to the highest levels of business and government. From his private law practice in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Branton became, along with Marshall, counsel for the Little Rock Nine in their 1957 efforts to integrate Central High School. Under his leadership of the Atlanta-based Voter Education Project, more than six hundred thousand black voters were registered from 1962 to 1965. He later became executive secretary of President Lyndon Johnson’s Council on Equal Opportunity and special assistant to attorneys general Nicholas Katzenbach and Ramsey Clark. He provided leadership to the United Planning Organization, the Alliance for Labor Action, and the NAACP; and he was dean of Howard University Law School.

At Branton’s funeral in 1988, former Arkansas senator David Pryor described him as “quiet and unassuming. . . . It is his humility and desire to always put the goals of the civil rights movement before self which probably accounts for the fact that [he] was not more famous than he was.” The influence of this quiet and unassuming man continues to be felt decades later.

Author

Judith Kilpatrick is a professor and associate dean at the University of Arkansas School of Law. She has written several articles about Wiley Austin Branton. There When We Needed Him is her first book.

Reviews

“[T]his biography is well written and enjoyable to read. Since his death in December 1988, Wiley A. Branton has been an overlooked leader in the Civil Rights Movement, and Kilpatrick’s biography goes a long way toward remedying this historical oversight.”
—Scott C. Smith, The Journal of African American History, Spring 2009

“Judith Kilpatrick’s book is a brief, careful, and sympathetic biography of an overlooked actor in civil rights legal history. Wiley Austin Branton is commonly assigned a supporting role in accounts of black Arkansans’ efforts to desegregate Little Rock’s schools. Kilpatrick takes him from the margins and puts this local leader turned national civil rights mover front and center. … Kilpatrick portrays a modest, warm, but dogged and courageous fighter who was willing to challenge racism at great personal risk. Branton urged people to remember the many unnamed local black lawyers who fought for civil rights. Kilpatrick’s book nicely contributes to historians’ recent efforts to do the same for the behind-the-scenes actors who mediated between the grass roots and the big names of the postwar civil rights movement.”
—Sophia Z. Lee, Law and History Review, Summer 2009

Praise

“Wiley Branton spent his life working for justice. He represented the best of his profession and his country. There When We Needed Him is a fitting tribute to a great man and dear friend, and an important contribution to the writing on the Civil Rights Movement.”
—Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC

“Arkansas and America are better places because of what Wiley did.”
—Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States