Garrison, Lloyd K. (Lloyd Kirkham), 1897-1991

Attorney, educator, civil rights advocate. B.A., Harvard College, 1919; LL. B., Harvard Law School, 1922; Dean, Wisconsin Law School, 1932-1945; Chairman, National Labor Relations Board, 1934-1935; Chairman, National War Labor Board, 1945-1946; President, National Urban League, 1947-1952; Chairman, Presidential Campaign Committee (New York State) for Adlai Stevenson, 1952; Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union, 1953-1954; Partner, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, 1946-1989.

Lawyer, government official.

Lloyd K. Garrison was born on November 19, 1897 in New York City. Garrison was a great-grandson of the famous abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, and the grandson of Wendell Phillips Garrison, the literary editor of The Nation. After service in the Navy in World War I, rising to the rank of chief petty officer, he graduated from Harvard College in 1919 and from Harvard Law School in 1922. He commenced practice in New York City with the firm of Root, Clark, Buckner & Howland, now known as Dewey, Ballantine.

In 1930, his long career of government service started as Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States conducting an investigation of the bankruptcy laws. He served as the first chairman of the National Labor Relations Board in 1935, thereafter general counsel. Garrison was appointed a member of the National War Labor Board in 1944 and became Vice-Chairman in March of 1945. He was active as a mediator and referee in many labor disputes, including a threatened General Motors strike in 1945, which established the pattern for wage increases in post-war labor relations. In 1947, he was appointed by the United States Supreme Court as a Special Master in a dispute between the State of Georgia and twenty railroads.

He was Dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School from 1932 to 1945, making that institution rise to greater academic prominence as one of the top American law schools. After W.W.II, he became a member of the New York City law firm of Paul, Weiss, Wharton & Garrison and remained as a partner and counsel until his death. He was a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University from 1938 to 1944, a member of the Board of Directors of the Field Foundation (1950-1973), a Trustee of the Taconic and Potomac Foundations (1953-1991), and a Trustee of Sarah Lawrence University and Howard University.

Long active in the civil rights movement, he was Director and then President (1947-1952) of the National Urban League. He remained active in the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the American Civil Liberties Union. Between 1962 and 1968, a turbulent period of educational crisis in New York City involving teachers strikes, deterioration of schools and issues of racial integration, decentralization and minority participation in the educational system, he was a member of the New York City Board of Education, serving as Vice President in 1963 and President from 1965 to 1967.

He was a leader in the Democratic Reform Movement in New York City and in 1952 was elected to the Democratic State Committee. He later was a key member in the effort led by him, Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas Finletter, and Herbert Lehman to oust Carmine DeSapio as New York County Democratic Leader in the years 1958 through 1961. A long-time friend of Adlai Stevenson, he was Chairman of the 1952 Stevenson Citizens Committee in New York and an active supporter in 1956. It was largely through his efforts that Stevenson became a partner in the Paul, Weiss firm from 1957 to 1961.

As a lawyer, he handled many significant cases including: the litigation which blocked the construction of a power plant at Storm King Mountain; the representation of the poet Langston Hughes (1953) and the playwright Arthur Miller before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (1956); and the defense of J. Robert Oppenheimer when the Atomic Energy Commission sought to remove his security clearance.