Chester I. Lewis, a leader of the Modern Civil Rights Movement at both state and national levels, was born and raised in 1928 at Hutchinson, Kansas. Lewis's father was editor of the African American newspaper The Hutchinson Blade, which attacked local practices of racial segregation. His mother was a teacher. After graduating from Hutchinson High School and serving in World War II, Lewis attended the University of Kansas where he received an undergraduate degree in 1951 and a law degree in 1953. By 1955, he was a lawyer in Sedgwick County, Kansas, and an active member of the Wichita chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Having successfully chaired the local chapter's Legal Redress Committee, Lewis became president of the organization in 1956. As leader of the Wichita NAACP, he volunteered his legal expertise to foster racial integration of the city's police and fire departments and its public schools. He also lobbied for the passage of the Wichita Fair Housing Ordinance. For more than a decade, Lewis was an active leader of the local, state, and national NAACP. In 1962, he was among the leaders of the "Young Turks," a national movement within the NAACP that sought to shift the organization's traditional focus of seeking change through court action and legislation to include strategies of non-violent protest and direct action. They movement also advocated greater NAACP emphasis on the issues of poverty experienced by African Americans in the urban north. When the "Young Turks" movement failed to reform the NAACP, Mr. Lewis resigned from the organization in 1968, endorsed the rising Black Power Movement, and continued to lead the struggle for African American civil rights. In 1983, he was one of four lawyers who successfully led a class action lawsuit on behalf of African Americans who had experienced racial discrimination as train porters.
From the guide to the Chester I. Lewis papers, 1948-1985, (University of Kansas Kenneth Spencer Research Library Kansas Collection)
