In Memoriam: Drew S. Days III

Drew Saunders Days III passed away in November 2020. He was 79. An ALI member since 1986, his impressive career included his nomination as the first African American Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice under former President Jimmy Carter and serving as Solicitor General of the United States for the Clinton Administration.

Days was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1941, and raised in Tampa and New York. To pursue a career in civil rights, he attended Yale Law School and graduated in 1966.

An excerpt from The New York Times Obituary:

He eschewed the path of clerking for an important judge or networking at a corporate firm. Rather, he started out working against housing discrimination in Chicago with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He later joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, for which he argued several school desegregation cases, including a lawsuit, which he won, to desegregate the same schools in Tampa, Fla., that he had attended as a boy.

President Jimmy Carter named Mr. Days assistant attorney general for civil rights in 1977, making him the first Black person to head any division in the Justice Department. His tenure was marked by aggressive enforcement of the nation’s civil rights laws in cases involving police misconduct and discrimination in employment, housing, voting and education.

He joined the Yale law faculty in 1981 and remained there for 35 years. During that time he testified before Congress against the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, arguing that Justice Thomas — then a federal appeals court judge — lacked sensitivity and historical perspective on matters of discrimination.

It was while he was at Yale that Mr. Days took a three-year detour at the relatively young age of 51 to serve as solicitor general, the nation’s top courtroom advocate.

Read his full NYT obit ;here [subscription required].

Read his Yale News obit here.

Read his Washington Post obit here [subscription required].