Earl Burrus Dickerson (June 22, 1891 – September 1, 1986) was an American attorney, activist, military officer and businessman who successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in Hansberry v. Lee,[1] and was a member of the Chicago City Council and acting chairman of the federal Fair Employment Practice Committee.

His maternal grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Garrett Sr., was born into slavery and purchased the freedom of himself and his wife, Eliza Montgomery prior to the end of the American Civil War in 1865.

[2][3][4] Following the completion of his college credits, but prior to receiving his degree, Dickerson taught English, debate, and mathematics at the Tuskegee Institute for the 1913–14 school year.

After the conclusion of the war in 1918, Dickerson became the only black founding member of the American Legion and personally organized the George L. Giles Post 87 in Chicago.

Later, during the Great Depression, Dickerson helped persuade Supreme Liberty Life Insurance to step in and save the cemetery after Burr Oak defaulted on its mortgage.

[14] Dickerson was known as "the dean of Chicago’s Black lawyers," and in 1933 became the first African American appointed as Illinois Assistant Attorney General under Governor Henry Horner.

Hansberry purchased a house in Woodlawn, which was under a racially restrictive covenant, with money borrowed from the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company.

[17] Dickerson determined that there was a better chance to win the case based on a procedural issue surrounding class suits rather than argue the constitutionality of racially restrictive covenants.

[20] In 1945, Dickerson was elected President of the National Bar Association, an organization that included most of the approximately 1,500 black lawyers then practicing in the United States.

[15] Dickerson was the president of the National Lawyers Guild from 1951 to 1954, which countered the political positions and racial restrictions of the American Bar Association.

[27] In addition to his various other career achievements, Dickerson was elected president and chief executive officer of Supreme Liberty Life Insurance in 1955 and held this position until 1971.

[29] During his tenure as an alderman, Dickerson worked to address poor housing conditions for black Americans and the existence of racially restrictive covenants.

[31] Dickerson was appointed as a member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) and served as its acting chairman.