"[1] Leighton left school after sixth grade to work with his father picking cranberries, strawberries, and blueberries.
[7] He read voraciously throughout his late childhood and began attending night school through the Works Progress Administration starting in 1934 to make up for his lack of diploma.
[2][6][4] While at Howard, one of his Kappa Alpha Psi brothers recommended him for the position of the Assistant to the Dean of Men, which gave him free housing and tuition.
[11] At the end of basic, he was sent to Fort Huachuca in Arizona before shipping out to the Pacific Theater as part of the segregated 93rd Infantry Division.
[15] From 1947 and 1952, he was the president of the Third Ward Regular Democratic Organization; he then was elected Assistant State Attorney General of Illinois in 1949.
[7][4][9][17] Chicago was still deeply segregated at this time and he was unable to rent an office from a white landlord, so he moved to the South Side and worked near Comiskey Park.
[2][6] In 1964, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley asked Leighton to run for Circuit Court judge; he was elected in 1964 and won by a landslide despite being the only Black person on the 18-person Democratic ticket.
[10] Charles H. Percy, a Republican Senator in Illinois, recommended Leighton to President Gerald Ford as a United States District Court judge.
[4][14][10][9] Leighton was sworn in in front of a Republican-controlled Senate and held the role until 1987, when his wife Virginia became ill and he stepped down from the bench.
[18] He brushed shoulders with many notable Black professionals; he mentored several Chicago lawyers including Barack Obama and at one point had Martin Luther King Jr. as a client.
[20][8] Leighton traveled from Chicago to Mobile, Alabama to serve as counsel alongside David R. Landau to 10 Black people who were told their answers were not satisfactory, while "white applicants with less qualifications were registered.
[25] Around the same time, Leighton and colleague William Robert Ming worked a similar case in Cairo, Illinois with counsel from Thurgood Marshall.
[26] In 1951, WWII veteran Harvey Clark and his family attempted to rent an apartment owned by Camille DeRose in the all-white suburb of Cicero, Illinois and were quickly turned away by the sheriff.
[2][9][10][27] While 60 police officers were on site, they reportedly did not provide crowd control, though they did eventually request that the firemen turn their hose on the rioters; they were refused.
[27] County Sheriff John E. Babb contacted Governor Adlai Stevenson to request the Illinois National Guard be sent in.
[32] Leighton used the false indictment charges against him as a lesson in understanding "defendants [who] say to me, 'Judge, I ain't guilty,' I could see what he meant because I had gone through the same thing.
"[2] All indictments were eventually dismissed, barring the one against Cicero Police Chief Erwin Konovsky, who was charged for "malfeasance in office in failing to prevent the mob from rioting.
"[33] Fines dealt to three police officers, including Konovsky, were sentenced, but later repealed by the Illinois Court of Appeals.
[39] After the riot, a Black family purchased the home from Camille DeRose and "rent[ed] to all comers, preferably negro and white war veterans.
[41] In 1951, Leighton found that the arresting officers had intimidated a false confession out of the two men and concealed documents that would have shown they were not guilty.
[43] He was placed on a probation that would end in jail time if he broke any more laws; he was not informed of this and a few days later participated in a sit-in at Rich's Department Store.
[45] Leighton joined the case pro bono in 1963 and alleged that the prosecution had buried evidence that would have immediately exonerated Miller.
[46] One of Miller's ex-girlfriends, who testified he had told her he murdered May, came forward about lying on the stand and that she had done so at the request of the Fulton County Deputy Sheriff, who paid her off.
[59] Another article of evidence came forward: the stained shorts found near May's body were covered in paint, not blood as the defendants had led them to believe.
[63][7] Leighton was part of a number of organizations and held numerous leadership positions: He met his wife Virginia Berry Quivers while at Howard University.