Charles Morgan Jr.

Charles "Chuck" Morgan Jr. (March 11, 1930 – January 8, 2009) was an American civil rights attorney from Alabama who played a key role in establishing the principle of "one man, one vote" in the Supreme Court of the United States decision in the 1964 case Reynolds v. Sims and represented Julian Bond and Muhammad Ali in their legal battles.

[1] Morgan attended the University of Alabama, where he earned his law degree and met his wife, the former Camille Walpole.

[2] The day after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four black girls in Birmingham in September 1963, Morgan spoke out publicly at a lunch time meeting he was having with the Birmingham Young Men's Business Club, in the middle of the city's white establishment,[1] to blame community leaders for their role in failing to stand up to the climate of racial hatred, stating that "Every person in this community who has in any way contributed during the past several years to the popularity of hatred is at least as guilty, or more so, than the demented fool who threw that bomb".

[2][4] The two biggest points of democratic power Morgan focused on were voting and equal dealing of justice among all citizens but specifically for Southern blacks.

Morgan had always had close ties and favorable relations with groups he did not necessarily agree with, though, such as segregationists and "silent moderates".

[1] Harrison Salisbury wrote a controversial piece in The New York Times in 1960 that corresponded with Morgan's future tones and beliefs.

Because he represented Hughes (called a "nigger lover" by whites and racists) in the case, the Ku Klux Klan began to harass Morgan.

[7] In June 1973, though there was little talk of impeachment among the public, Morgan predicted to his staff that Nixon would be removed from office "by the end of the year."

He edited and published a 56-page handbook entitled "Why President Richard Nixon Should Be Impeached," explaining the process, which the public barely knew about.

In the 1964 Supreme Court case Reynolds v. Sims, Morgan successfully argued that districts in state legislatures needed to be of nearly equal size, establishing the principle of "one man, one vote" to effectively end the use of gerrymandering that gave greater political power to the rural legislators who controlled the Alabama Legislature.

[2] At a party in Washington, D.C., an attendee from New York indicated that he would not vote for Jimmy Carter for president because of his Southern accent, to which Morgan replied "That's bigotry, and that makes you a bigot."

He represented the Tobacco Institute in its opposition to smoking bans and won a number of cases for Sears, Roebuck and Company in which the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) had accused the company of racial and sexual discrimination due not to complaints from employees but rather due to EEOC analysis of data from Sears which was interpreted as evidence of discrimination.