As first assistant counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund he served as counsel in many leading civil rights cases of the 1960s, including those that led to the integration of Southern hospitals and medical facilities, and a moratorium on capital punishment.
With special permission from the justices, he argued and won a capital case before the united states supreme court at the age of 26[3].
He served as counsel in the 1968 Virginia case that led to the end of the “all deliberate speed” doctrine and brought the first winning case under employment discrimination provisions of title vii of the 1964 civil rights act[4].
[6] In 1987 he became a Massachusetts licensed marriage and family therapist but continued to teach and practice law.
[11][failed verification] In 2012 John Jay College (CUNY) conferred an Honorary Doctor of Laws calling him "the principal architect of the death penalty abolition movement in the United States.