Black, Charles Lund, Jr.

▪ 2002

      American legal scholar and educator (b. Sept. 22, 1915, Austin, Texas—d. May 5, 2001, New York, N.Y.), was a renowned authority on constitutional law; his 1974 book Impeachment: A Handbook was widely studied during the Watergate Scandal and was reissued during the impeachment proceedings against Pres. Bill Clinton in 1999. Black, who held a law degree from Yale University, taught at Columbia University, New York City, from 1947 to 1956, at Yale from 1956 to 1986, and again at Columbia from 1986 to 1999. A noted champion of civil rights, he helped write the legal brief for the plaintiff in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kan.), the 1954 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

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