Moorfield Storey Takes First NAACP Cases to Supreme Court Pro Bono

Moorfield Storey, a white Boston Brahmin lawyer and the first president of the NAACP, argued numerous civil rights cases before the Supreme Court during the 1910s, including Guinn v. United States (1915), Buchanan v. Warley (1917), and Moore v. Dempsey (1923), in all of which he won. Working pro bono, Storey helped establish the NAACP's legal strategy and won landmark victories against grandfather clauses, racial zoning, and mob-dominated criminal trials. His work demonstrated the potential of litigation as a civil rights tool decades before Thurgood Marshall.