NEW YORK – Robert Carter, a lawyer who helped put together the legal arguments that led to major civil rights victories against segregation, has died. He was 94.
His son John Carter said the former federal judge died Tuesday morning at a Manhattan hospital after suffering a stroke last week.
Carter was a member of the legal team led by Thurgood Marshall that turned to the courts to battle discrimination in the 1940s and 1950s. That team won high-profile victories like the Brown v. the Board of Education decision in 1954 in which the U.S. Supreme Court decreed segregated public schools were unconstitutional.
Carter was nominated for the federal judiciary in 1972. His tenure there included oversight of the merger between the National Basketball Association and the American Basketball Association.