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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient John Minor Wisdom
Biography
New Orleans judge and legal scholar who played a key role in desegregating courthouses and classrooms in the South. He was the last survivor of “the Four,” a group of Fifth Circuit judges supporting desegregation in the 1950s and '60s.
Judge John Minor Wisdom graduated from Washington and Lee University in 1925, studied at the Harvard Graduate School and received his law degree from Tulane University in 1929. He practiced law for almost 30 years before being appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit by President Eisenhower in 1957. Judge Wisdom wrote many landmark decisions that influenced the civil rights movement, including the opinions that resulted in the desegregation of the University of Mississippi. In 1993 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, from President Clinton. In 1994 Congress enacted legislation to rename the old federal building in New Orleans the John Minor Wisdom United States Court of Appeals Building. In 1996 the American Bar Association awarded Judge Wisdom its highest honor, the ABA Medal "for conspicuous service to the cause of American jurisprudence." Died: New Orleans, May 15, 1999 at the Age of 93
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Medal History
