Thursday, October 24, 2002

WRITER: Larry B. Dendy, (706) 542-8078, ldendy@uga.edu
CONTACT: Matt Winston, (706) 542-9167, mwinston@uga.edu

UGA TO AWARD HONORARY DEGREE TO
CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER DONALD HOLLOWELL

ATHENS, Ga. — The University of Georgia will award an honorary degree to Donald L. Hollowell, the venerable Atlanta lawyer whose fights to integrate UGA, register African-American voters and combat racial discrimination made him an icon of the civil rights movement.

Hollowell will receive the honorary Doctor of Laws degree at UGA’s fall semester undergraduate commencement exercises Saturday, Dec. 21. He will be the 75th recipient of the degree which, after the earned doctorate, is the highest recognition UGA can bestow.

The university awards honorary degrees for "exemplary and broad contributions to society." Recipients must demonstrate a "sustained record of achievements of lasting significance" in their field.

Hollowell, now 84 years old, and New York lawyer Constance Baker Motley led the legal team that in 1961 forced UGA to open its doors to its first African-American students, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes. His law firm also handled scores of other civil rights cases including several decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

As president of the Voter Education Project from 1971 to 1986, Hollowell helped raise the number of African Americans registered to vote in the United States from three million to 5.5 million. He also created and led the southeastern regional office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which fought racial discrimination in the workplace.

"Donald Hollowell was a leader in perhaps the most important social movement in the history of our country," said UGA President Michael F. Adams. "His commitment to the principles of justice and equality for all citizens, and his unflinching courage and determination in the face of great opposition and even danger, merit our highest esteem and gratitude. The University of Georgia is proud to honor a true hero."

Often hailed as a patriarch of the civil rights struggles of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Hollowell was a shrewd legal tactician who championed civil rights in the courtroom rather than the streets. He joined the movement as lead counsel for the legal team that waged a seven-year unsuccessful battle to enroll Horace Ward in the UGA law school in the 1950s. Ward eventually graduated from Northwestern University law school, joined Hollowell’s law firm and, in an ironic twist, was instrumental in helping Holmes and Hunter (now Charlayne Hunter-Gault) break the segregation barrier at UGA.

Hollowell was a mentor and teacher for such young lawyers as Ward, Vernon Jordan and Marvin
Arrington, and was an associate of many leaders of the civil rights movement, including Julian Bond and Martin Luther King Jr., whom he once helped free from a Georgia prison after his arrest in a protest.

In her autobiography, Hunter-Gault recalls that Hollowell was a hero to student civil rights activists, who used to chant "King is our leader, Hollowell is our lawyer, and we shall not be moved."

Born in Wichita, Kan., in 1917, Hollowell earned a law degree from Loyola University. After serving in a segregated Army unit in World War II, he settled in Georgia, becoming one of the few black lawyers in the state.

He became active in the NAACP and focused his law practice on civil rights and discrimination issues. By the 1960s, "his name had become synonymous with the black civil rights struggle in Georgia," and he was the state’s leading civil rights attorney, according to UGA historian Robert Pratt, who chronicles much of Hollowell’s career in his recent book on UGA’s desegregation.

In 1959, Hollowell was among a group of black Atlanta leaders that tapped Holmes and Hunter to apply for admission to the then all-white University of Georgia. Over the next two years, Hollowell and Motley, assisted by Ward and Jordan, fought numerous courtroom battles that ended with a federal judge ordering UGA to admit the students.

Hollowell’s firm handled many other civil rights cases including several that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Among the most notable: the defense of Preston Cobb, a black 15-year-old from Monticello, Ga., who was sentenced to the electric chair for allegedly killing a white man. Hollowell stopped the execution and eventually got Cobb released.

Pratt says Hollowell considers UGA desegregation and the Cobb defense his two greatest legal accomplishments. "Charlayne’s and Hamilton’s entry into [UGA] gave me fulfillment," Hollowell told Pratt. "It was a proud moment in our history, and certainly one of the highlights of my legal career."

Hollowell’s firm helped desegregate Augusta’s buses and Macon’s schools, and won a landmark case that required Grady Hospital in Atlanta to admit black doctors and dentists to its staff, and led to the admission of blacks into medical and professional organizations in Georgia.

In 1966, Hollowell became director of the southeastern office of the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, an agency created by President Lyndon Johnson to combat discrimination based on race and gender. Ten years later, he stepped down as director and became the agency’s regional attorney, supervising as many as 34 lawyers in preparation of
hundreds of court cases. He served until 1985 when he joined the law firm of his former protégé
Marvin Arrington.

Now retired and living in Atlanta, Hollowell has received numerous awards and honors for his career. The Georgia House of Representatives passed a resolultion commending him for "his courage, intelligence, integrity, dignity, honesty and unwavering commitment to social change."
Fulton County awarded him an honorary judgeship, the city of Atlanta named a street for him, and the Emory University law school established a professorship in his name.

##