[3] Delany had a long career serving as both a justice in the New York City Domestic Relations Court as well as an attorney and adviser to civil rights activists Rev.

Henry Beard Delany was born into slavery in St. Mary's, Georgia, but later became educated and advanced as a priest and the first African-American bishop in the Episcopal Church.

Delany was born and raised on the campus of St. Augustine's School (now University) in Raleigh, North Carolina, where his father was the Vice-Principal and his mother, a teacher and administrator.

Having grown up on the campus of historically black Saint Augustine's College where his parents taught, Delany had been shielded from the rigid system of racial segregation that dominated North Carolina in the early twentieth century.

He worked his way through undergraduate college holding a job as a Red Cap railway Pullman porter at New York Penn Station.

Scott, a poet, essayist and educator, was also a social worker with the National Urban League working to gather statistics for a "Study of Delinquent and Neglected Negro Children."

[9][10] First Lady of the United States Eleanor Roosevelt made a visit to Harlem in 1954 to support the efforts of the growing Spence-Chapin Adoption Service.

[11] Judge Delany and his wife Willetta became the first African American family to host an incumbent First Lady, giving a reception from Mrs. Roosevelt at their home on 145th street and Riverside Drive.

Mrs. Willetta Delany was one of the earliest African-American women on the Board of Spence-Chapin Adoption Service, along with Mrs. Rachel Robinson, Mrs. Ralph Bunche, and Marian Anderson.

Their investigatory commission found that the riot was caused not by communist agitators, as some had speculated, but by frustration due to conditions of economic deprivation, racial discrimination, and an unresponsive city government.

In 1943, he hosted the formal opening of a Harlem campaign for a Colored Orphan Asylum in response to inadequate services supplied to black children by various religious organizations.

[8] Delany also served on the National Advisory Board of the Commission on Law and Social Action (CLSA), the legal arm of the American Jewish Congress (AJC).

In 1946, alongside Justice Jane Bolin, Delany criticized the practice of racial matching of probation officers with juvenile probationers.

In late 1956, he published an article discussing his consultancy and findings, entitled "Hubert Delany Reports on Israel", in The Crisis, the official NAACP publication.

[21] In late 1959, Martin Luther King Jr. was leaving Montgomery, Alabama, to return to his father's church, Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta, Georgia.

After a trial of three days, by the sheer strength of their legal arsenal, they overcame the most vicious Southern taboos festering in a virulent and inflamed atmosphere and they persuaded an all-white jury to accept the word of a Negro over that of white men.

"[23][24] Dr. King also noted: "I am frank to confess that on this occasion I learned that truth and conviction in the hands of a skillful advocate could make what started out as a bigoted, prejudiced jury, choose the path of justice.

"[25] In May 1963, Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller appointed Delany as chairman of a powerful Temporary State Commission on Low-income Housing.

The commission proposed using state funds to help low-income families live in middle-income housing projects and privately owned apartments as a means of promoting integration.

By proposing to subsidize low-income families, placing them in middle-income units built with state assistance, the Delany commission ultimately went far beyond the original Rockefeller plan.

Under Governor Rockefeller, and by 1973, the UDC (known today as the Empire State Development Corporation) had successfully created over 88,000 units of housing for limited income families and the aging.

[27] Delany was on the brief for the United States Supreme Court decision determining Congressman Adam Clayton Powell's seating in the 90th Congress.

138 Argued: April 21, 1969, Decided: June 16, 1969 In November 1966, petitioner Adam Clayton Powell, an African American congressman from New York, had been duly elected to serve in the House of Representatives for the 90th Congress.

The suit claimed that the House could exclude him only if it found he failed to meet the standing requirements of age, citizenship, and residence contained in Art.

The ancestry of Judge Delany's African American family has been accurately traced back to the mid 18th century with ties to St. Marys, Georgia, Fernandina Beach, Florida, and the Danville, Virginia, area.

Three of the siblings, including Sarah Delany, the first black person in New York to teach high school domestic science, were lifelong educators.