advisor to those who spoke with louder voices. In this way, not just in his civil rights law practice, but also as the executive secretary of President Johnson’s Council on Equal Opportunity, special assistant to Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, and special counselor to the United Planning Organization, the Alliance for Labor Action, and the NAACP, he fought the good fight on an ever grander field. But the culmination of his career was as Dean of Howard Law School where he served with distinction till he resigned over, among other things, the issue of reverse discrimination. Howard had proposed a policy of not hiring white professors if a black one was available. Branton disagreed, stating, “I just think that’s wrong. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. I don’t think a black school has any more right to discriminate in favor of black people than other schools have to discriminate in favor of whites.� What Branton was telling us, of course, was that only in colorblindness can America ever see her way out of the labyrinth of racism. Wiley Austin Branton left us too soon, in1988. As Juan Williams, NPR correspondent, eulogized, “He was the best of the
breed of civil rights workers who changed America in the ‘50s and ‘60s.â€? And William Raspberry of the Washington Post described him as “a giant.â€? Fittingly, his funeral was in the National Cathedral, and his body was brought home to Pine Bluff and buried with his family. Wiley Branton was not only renowned for his compassion, competence, and courage, but also for his great wit. Once when arguing a case before the United States Supreme Court, Branton made the point that his client, a Jefferson County death-row prisoner, had been forced to travel barefoot in weather too cool for going shoeless. One Justice asked about the time of year and Branton said October. Then the same justice opined gravely that that wouldn’t be unusual in Arkansas, whereupon Branton retorted, “Most of us don’t go barefoot as late as October, your Honor.â€? The courtroom exploded into laughter. The world smiles with the charming and Branton rarely lost those smiles or a case. Of course, Wiley Branton, as we all now know, didn’t spend all that much time going barefoot in Arkansas, but he certainly understood and championed those who did. ď Ž
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