Aloyisus Leon Higginbotham Jr. (February 25, 1928 – December 14, 1998) was an American civil rights advocate, historian, presidential adviser, and federal court judge.

[3] He chose Purdue because it admitted black students; was cheaper, at that time, than Rutgers University; and offered tuition discounts for good academic performance.

[4] Higginbotham sought a meeting with the University President, Edward C. Elliott, to ask permission for the students to sleep in a section of one of the heated dormitories.

"[4] Higginbotham would later identify this encounter, and an incident where he was traveling with the Purdue debate team but unable to stay in a hotel with the rest of the members,[7] as the events that caused him to pursue a career in the law, saying: And then, even though I had been doing very well there, I decided that engineering would not make any difference in America.

As a first-year student, Higginbotham worked as a research assistant to a professor, who arranged for him to attend the oral arguments in Sweatt v. Painter, which dealt with the admission of blacks to the University of Texas.

[citation needed] In 1960 Higginbotham, as a delegate at the National NAACP convention, supported Hubert Humphrey over John F. Kennedy for the organization's endorsement for president.

[4] He was also a guest at White House functions, including a state dinner for the King and Queen of Afghanistan that took place several weeks before Kennedy's assassination.

[2] Following his appointment to the District Court, Higginbotham developed a relationship with President Johnson, attending various White House functions and conferences in the mid-1960s.

[6] Other notable figures at the meeting were Vice President Humphrey, Justice Marshall, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, Andrew Brimmer, Clarence Mitchell, Clifford Alexander, and Bayard Rustin.

Higginbotham stayed the night at the White House, attended a service at the Washington National Cathedral, and continued to advise the President into the next days.

[6] Higginbotham would later describe Johnson's reaction to seeing the efforts of a small community to restore a dilapidated police station, saying "I think he was elated, absolutely exhilarated, because he saw results.

"[6] A year later, following the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, President Johnson called on Higginbotham again, appointing him as a member of the newly created Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence.

of Pa. v. Local 542, Int'l Union of Operating Engineers, explaining why he as an African American judge with a history of active involvement in the civil rights struggle was not obligated to recuse himself from presiding over litigation concerning claims of racial discrimination.

[14] Jewish federal Judge Paul Borman relied on the Higginbotham opinion in part in his 2014 decision not to recuse himself from the trial of Palestinian-American Rasmea Odeh.

[14] Higginbotham was nominated by President Jimmy Carter on September 19, 1977, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated by Judge Francis Lund Van Dusen.

[2] In 1991, Judge Higginbotham wrote "An Open Letter to Justice Clarence Thomas From a Federal Judicial Colleague," published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

In his letter, Judge Higginbotham expressed his "concern and sorrow that Justice Thomas would turn his back on a century of [racial] struggle.

[21] Higginbotham published In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process 1: The Colonial Period in 1978, which the Oxford University Press reissued in 1980.

[22] His second and surviving wife, Dr. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, was also a distinguished historian and faculty member of Harvard's History and African American Studies Departments.

[23] Judge Higginbotham's second book, Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions in the American Legal Process was first published by the Oxford University Press in 1996, after his judicial retirement.

He also helped University of Pennsylvania law professor Anita Hill and Emma Coleman Jordan publish Race, Gender, and Power in America: The Legacy of the Hill-Thomas Hearings in 1995.

Although retired, he delivered over 100 speeches to spur younger generations to continue to fight for racial justice, and during his lifetime received more than 60 honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning.

He had visited South Africa in 1982 with other black jurists and had been appalled by the racial oppression he found and analogized to before the American Civil War.

[25] After apartheid's demise, Higginbotham consulted with Nelson Mandela and founded the South Africa Free Election (SAFE) Fund.

Higginbotham then said, I submit to you that it would be grossly improper to impeach a President under such a factual scenario, because perjury regarding a 55 mile per-hour traffic offense does not rise to the level of 'Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors' about which the framers were concerned when they drafted Article II.

I submit that as to impeachment purposes, there is not a significant substantive difference between the hypothetical traffic offense and the actual sexual incident in this matter.

The alleged perjurious statements denying a sexual relationship between the President of the United States and another consenting adult do not rise to the level of constitutional egregiousness that triggers the impeachment clause of Article II.

"[28]Higginbotham concluded his testimony, writing, "I submit that your individual vote will have a profound impact on the entire history and future of the United States of America.

I pray that this Committee will, in a non-partisan way, rise to its highest potential of statesmanship by giving this issue its calm and insightful thought before speaking and casting a vote that will affect America's rendezvous with destiny.

[3] Higginbotham received the first Spirit of Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award in 1994 from the American Swedish Historical Museum on the basis of his advocacy on behalf of America's children within the legal profession and his human rights efforts in South Africa.