Charles Swinger Conley (December 7, 1921–September 9, 2010) was an American attorney, civil rights leader and Alabama's first Black judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Macon County.
He served as attorney of record for Martin Luther King Jr.,[2] the Montgomery Improvement Association, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
[4][5] After Conley returned to Montgomery he worked on many civil rights cases including the desegregation of public libraries[6] and New York Times Co. v. Sullivan,[7] representing many notable people including Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy,[8] Joseph Lowery, Solomon Snowden Seay[9] and Fred Shuttlesworth.
[12][13] A protest starting on February 1, 1960, at the Alabama State College campus had been aggressively attended by Montgomery police, triggering the appeal.
Discrimination against African Americans continued in Montgomery but segregation had been effectively disputed allowing expansion of the movement to overturn racial injustice.