Loren Miller & Thurgood Marshall
Loren Miller and Leon Washington, Los Angeles, ca. 1964
Thurgood Marshall, Los Angeles, 1954
Born to a former slave and a white Midwesterner in Nebraska, Loren Miller moved to Los Angeles in 1929 where he worked as an editor, and eventually bought, the California Eagle, the oldest African American newspaper in L.A. In 1964 Miller was appointed to the L.A. County Municipal Court.Along with Thurgood Marshall (the first African American justice of the Supreme Court), Miller argued two landmark rulings before the U.S Supreme: Shelley v. Kramer, to abolish racial restrictive housing covenants and in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, to integrate schools. Loren Miller and Thurgood Marshall argued the case Shelly v. Kraemer, 1948, when the West Adams Heights Improvement Association filled a lawsuit when white homeowners sold their homes to Norm O. Houston (founder of Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, one of the largest black owned businesses) and other Black businessmen claiming the racial covenant on the property was violated.
