Page "Mount Gilead, North Carolina" Paragraph 8

Mount Gilead is the birthplace of noted civil rights attorney Julius L. Chambers ( b. 1936 ).

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ( J. D., 1962 ), Chambers served as editor-in-chief of the school's Law Review and went on to earn his master of law degree from Columbia University in 1964.

That summer he opened in Charlotte, NC, an office that would become the state's first integrated law practice.

Chambers and his founding partners, James E. Ferguson, II and Adam Stein, working with lawyers of the Legal Defense Fund, successfully litigated civil rights cases and helped shape the contours of civil rights law by winning landmark United States Supreme Court rulings in such cases as Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U. S. 1 ( 1971 ), the famous school busing decision, and Griggs v. Duke Power Co. 401 U. S. 424, 91 S. Ct.

849, 28 L. Ed. 2d 158 ( 1971 ) and Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405 ( 1975 ), two of the Supreme Court's most significant Title VII employment discrimination decisions.