Coleman, William T. (William Thaddeus), 1920-

William T. Coleman worked for the U.S. Reclamation Service at Cody, Wyoming and on the Shoshone Dam Project.

William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr., was born July 7, 1920, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1946. He began his legal career in 1947, serving as law clerk to Judge Herbert F. Goodrich of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and clerk to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter in 1948. He was one of the lead strategists and coauthor of the legal brief in Brown v. Board of Education, 1954. He served as a member of the NAACP's national legal committee, director and member of its executive committee, and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He was a member of President Eisenhower's Committee on Government Employment Policy from 1959 to 1961, a senior consultant and assistant counsel to the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy in 1964, and a consultant to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1963 to 1975. In 1969, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the twenty-fourth session of the United Nations General Assembly. He was a member of the National Commission on Productivity from 1971 to 1972. He was senior partner in the law firm of Dilworth, Paxson, Kalish, Levy & Coleman at the time of his nomination to be the fourth Secretary of Transportation. He served as Secretary from March 7, 1975 to January 20, 1977. During his tenure, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's automobile test facility at East Liberty, Ohio, commenced operations, and the Department established the Materials Transportation Bureau to address pipeline safety and the safe shipment of hazardous materials. On leaving the Department, he returned to Philadelphia, but subsequently became a partner in the Washington office of the Los Angeles-based law firm of O'Melveny and Myers. In 1996, in the wake of the July 17 crash of TWA Flight 800, he served on the President's Commission on Airline and Airport Security. That same year, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given to civilians by the United States.

William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr., was the first African American to clerk for a U.S. Supreme Court justice, served as secretary of transportation under the Ford administration, and helped try numerous important civil rights cases. He was born on July 7, 1920, in the Germantown district of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to William Thaddeus and Laura Beatrice Mason Coleman. Coleman's father was a director of the Germantown boys club for forty years, and as a result, Coleman met many African American notables at an early age, including W.E.B. DuBois. After attending an all-black segregated elementary school, Coleman attended the mostly-white Germantown High School. After high school, Coleman attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated summa cum laude with his B.A. degree in 1941. Eager to work in law ever since childhood, Coleman attended Harvard Law School later that year. In 1943, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. As defense counsel for eighteen courts-martial, he won acquittals for sixteen. He returned to Harvard Law School after the war.

In 1946, Coleman received his L.L.B. degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, after becoming the third African American man to serve on the board of editors of theHarvard Law Review. He was a Langdell fellow, and was therefore permitted to stay at Harvard Law School to study for an extra year. In 1947, he was admitted to the bar and obtained a job working as a law clerk with Judge Herbert F. Goodrich of the Third Circuit's U.S. Court of Appeals. The following year, he became U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter's law clerk, and as such, he was the first African American to clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1949, Coleman joined Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison, a noted New York law firm, where he met Thurgood Marshall and worked pro bono to assist Marshall with NAACP cases. In 1952, Coleman became the first African American to join an all-white firm, and in 1966, he became partner at Dilworth, Paxon, Kalish, Levy and Coleman. Coleman worked in the Civil Rights Movement throughout the 1950s, including five cases for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) cases that led directly to theBrown v. Board of Educationdecision. He also served as co-counsel forMcLaughlin v. Florida, a case that decided the constitutionality of interracial marriages.

In 1959, President Eisenhower convinced Coleman to work on the President's commission on employment policy; Coleman continued to work in presidential commissions for Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, including the Warren commission's investigation of Kennedy's assassination. In 1971, Coleman was elected president of the NAACP-LDF. In 1975, Coleman was appointed President Gerald Ford's Secretary of Transportation, becoming only the second African American to hold a cabinet-level position. During his tenure, he created the first Statement of National Transportation Policy in U.S. history. When Carter became president in 1976, Coleman returned to the private sector, becoming a senior partner of the Los Angeles-based O'Melveny & Myers law firm. In 1995, Coleman was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to the legal profession and to society.

Coleman passed away on March 31, 2017 at the age of 96.