Samuel Wilbert Tucker (1913-1990)

Samuel W. Tucker, civil rights attorney, was born in Alexandria, where he organized a sit-in at the Whites-only public library in 1939. After graduating from Howard University in 1933 and serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he moved to Emporia. During the 1960s, he became head of the Virginia NAACP’s legal team and a partner in the Richmond law firm of Hill, Tucker, and Marsh. He pursued several successful U.S. Supreme Court cases, co-authoring the brief for Griffin v. Prince Edward County (1964) and arguing Green v. New Kent (1968) and Wright v. Emporia (1972). Tucker’s work helped overturn the tactics that localities had used to resist federal school-desegregation mandates.