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John Payton, the prominent civil right attorney who was director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund has died. He was 65 years old.
Payton served as the University of Michigan's lead attorney during the trail and appeals phases of the Grutter and Gratz cases which were decided by the Supreme Court in 2003 and affirmed the legal status of affirmative action in higher education.
John Payton was a native of Los Angeles. His father was an insurance agent. In 1965 Payton enrolled at Pomona College. At that time he was one of only a handful of black students in the five colleges making up the Claremont College system. By his senior year, Payton had successfully lobbied the school's administration to recruit more black students and to organize a black studies program. At Pomona, Payton majored in literature and wrote his undergraduate thesis on W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and the Harlem Renaissance. Financial...