Arts & Entertainment

Civil Rights Pioneer Speaking at Rotary Tuesday

The brother of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Alex Haley will speak to Rotarians Tuesday morning.

He fought taunting racism early in life to become a political ambassador with a long history in federal politics. And Tuesday morning at 7:15, George Haley will speak to the Rotary Club of Mission Viejo at Costa Del Sol Golf Course.

The brother of Pulitzer Prize-winner Alex Haley (of "Roots" fame), George Haley was one of only two black men at the Univeristy of Arkansas Law School, where he graduated in 1952. There he was regularly taunted and insulted, including once finding a noose dangling from the ceiling of his segregated study room.

Haley went on to become a state senator in 1964 and later enjoyed several presidential appointments to various positions, beginning with President Richard Nixon and continuing with presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

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Here's a detailed bio of Haley sent in by Rotary President .

Attorney George Williford Boyce Haley was born on August 28, 1925 in Henning, Tennessee. He grew up on a number of college campuses, as both his parents were university professors. As young boy while living at A&M College at Normal, Alabama, he met Dr. George Washington Carver and musician Marion Anderson. While a student in high school he played the french horn with the A&M College marching band. In 1943 Haley graduated from Bordentown High School a military boarding school in Bordentown, New Jersey. Two months after graduation, he was drafted into the military and stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey, where he spent the next three years.

From 1946 until 1949, Haley attended Morehouse College with fellow students Martin Luther King, Jr and Lerone Bennett. After receiving his bachelor's of arts degree, he accepted a challenge from his father and enrolled at the University of Arkansas Law School where he and fellow African American C.C. Mercer were the only blacks at the school.

While at Arkansas he endured horrendous acts of racism, including having a bag of urine thrown in his face and facing daily verbal insults. At the end of his first year he scored the highest marks on his final examinations and by the end of his second year he was writing articles for the Law Review. He received his law degree in 1952.

After receiving his law degree, he joined the firm of Stevens Jackson in Kansas, often referred to as the architects of the landmark civil rights case, Brown v. the Board of Education. While still working in private practice, Haley served as Deputy City Attorney from 1954-1964. He then embarked on a political career, when he was elected as a Kansas State Senator. He held that post from 1964-1968.

In 1966, Haley unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Congress; nonetheless he still landed in Washington, D.C. In 1969, Haley was appointed Chief Counsel of the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (Federal Transit Administration) by President Richard Nixon. From 1973-1976, he served as Associate Director for Equal Employment Opportunity at the United States Information Agency (USIA). Upon leaving USIA, he became a partner in the law firm of Obermayer, Rebmann, Maxwell and Hippel of Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. before establishing his own firm in 1981. In 1986, he made another unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.

In 1990, President George Bush appointed Haley Chairman of the Postal Rate Commission, where he served for the next eight years, after being re-commissioned by President Bill Clinton. In April of 1998, President Clinton named him Ambassador to the Republic of The Gambia in West Africa, where he served until 2001.

Currently Haley serves as the executor of his brother's, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Alex Haley, estate.

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