William Henry Lewis

William Henry Lewis was born on the twenty-eighth of November 1868 at Berkley, Virginia, across the Elizabeth River from Norfolk. His parents had been enslaved and later freed; his father, who labored on the Berkley docks, in time answered a call to the pulpit and became a Baptist minister after the family moved to Portsmouth. From these modest beginnings the boy rose with uncommon force of will.

He studied at Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute, then made his way north to Amherst College, where he was among the first African American men to play college football and was chosen class orator. At Harvard Law School he continued on the gridiron at center, and in 1892 and again in 1893 he was named to Walter Camp's All-America team — the first African American ever so honored. He later coached at Harvard for a dozen years and wrote an early treatise on the game's tactics.

Admitted to the Massachusetts bar, Lewis entered public life with equal distinction. He served in the state legislature, became in 1903 an Assistant United States Attorney, and in 1911 was appointed by President William Howard Taft as an Assistant Attorney General of the United States — then the highest federal executive post ever held by a Black American. That same year he was among the first African Americans admitted to the American Bar Association.

For decades thereafter he practiced law before the highest courts, respected as an advocate of rare skill. He died on the first of January 1949 in Boston. May the pioneer who broke ground on the field, at the bar, and in the halls of government be forever honored.