Emma Hamilton Dancing

Belford Vance Lawson Jr. was born in 1901 in Roanoke, Virginia, son to Belford Sr. and Sarah Lawson. According to the 1910 census, Belford Sr., as well as Belford Jr.’s two older brothers, worked as laborers in the railroad industry; he was expected to take a blue-collar job just as his family members had. Roanoke did not have a high school for the city’s black residents, and Belford Vance Lawson enrolled in the Hampton Institute as a carpenter. According to his son, Belford Jr. “aspired to more than manual labor” and attended Ferris Institute in Michigan to receive a college preparatory education.

After a year at Ferris, he attended the University of Michigan and joined Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He was a member of the Michigan’s debate team and played football. He graduated in 1924 with a bachelor of arts degree.

Lawson taught and coached at Jackson College (now Jackson State University) and Morris Brown College. He then attended Yale Law School for approximately two years but did not graduate. During his time in New Haven, he became the director of the Dixwell Avenue Community House and was recognized nationally for his community work.

In 1931, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company and enrolled in Howard University Law School, from which he graduated in 1933. With Theodore Moody Berry, an Alpha Phi Alpha brother, he opened a law firm in Washington, D.C. He also briefly taught at Terrell Law School.

In 1933, Lawson helped establish the New Negro Alliance (NNA), a civil rights organization that employed direct action techniques to secure jobs and better treatment for African Americans. Among their activities was using “Don't Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaigns, including boycotts, petitions, and pickets, to pressure businesses to hire Black employees. One NNA boycott of Sanitary Grocery led to a 1938 Supreme Court case affirming the right to picket.

Lawson went on to have a notable law career and was the first Black attorney to win a case before the Supreme Court. He made eight appearances before the Supreme Court. Two significant cases, New Negro Alliance vs. Sanitary Grocery (1938) and Henderson vs. United States (1950), helped expand civil rights for African Americans with the former protecting the right to protest discriminatory businesses and the latter helping desegregate dining cars.

In 1939, he married Marjorie McKenzie, who was an accomplished lawyer, scholar, and judge on the D.C. Juvenile Court. In 1956, Lawson became the first Black person to address the Democratic National Convention. The Lawsons supported Kennedy’s 1960 campaign, on which Marjorie McKenzie served as head of the civil rights division.

Lawson served as the 16th General President of Alpha Phi Alpha, continuing to remain active in leadership after his tenure and occasionally publishing in the fraternal journal, The Sphinx. He also served on several boards, including as national president of the YMCA and of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, and as vice chairman of the United Negro College Fund. After more than 40 years as a lawyer, Lawson retired in 1977. He died in 1985, and his funeral procession took place at Howard University.