James Anderson Dombrowski (January 17, 1897 – May 2, 1983) was an American civil rights activist and Methodist minister.
Dombrowski was ordained as a Methodist minister and earned his PhD from the Union Theological Seminary in New York.
He attended Emory University at its new campus in Atlanta, graduating in 1923 and later serving as alumni secretary for the school.
[1] At the urging of a professor, in 1929 Dombrowski traveled to Elizabethton, Tennessee, to learn about the strike of the rayon mill workers.
[1] With fellow Union Theological Seminary graduate Myles Horton and Don West, he co-founded Highlander Folk School in Tennessee in 1932.
As a white progressive from the South, Dombrowski's educational and organizing efforts "prepared the ground" for the civil rights movement.
The case Dombrowski v. Pfister, was eventually heard by the United States Supreme Court in 1965, which ruled that the Louisiana law in question was unconstitutional.