Lloyd Kirkham Garrison

Lloyd Kirkham Garrison (November 19, 1897 – October 2, 1991) was an American lawyer. He was Dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School, but also served as chairman of the "first" National Labor Relations Board, chairman of the National War Labor Board, and chair of the New York City Board of Education. He was active in a number of social causes, was a highly successful attorney on Wall Street, and for a short time was a special assistant to the United States Attorney General. Early life and education Garrison was born on November 19, 1897, in New York City to Lloyd McKim and Alice (Kirkham) Garrison. His great-grandfather was William Lloyd Garrison, the famous American abolitionist, and his grandfather was Wendell Phillips Garrison, who once was literary editor of The Nation (a left-wing magazine of politics and opinion). His father died of typhoid when Garrison was a child, and he was largely raised by his grandfather, Wendell. His grandfather, who knew many Civil War-era abolitionists (Frederick Douglass was a frequent guest in the Garrison home in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and Wendell Garrison knew him personally), regaled young Lloyd with many stories about the great struggles for civil rights and liberties of the 19th century. He graduated from St. Paul's School, a college-preparatory boarding school in New Hampshire. He attended Harvard College, but quit school in 1917 to enlist in the United States Navy after the U.S. entered World War I. He returned to Harvard in 1919, and in 1922 he graduated with a Bachelor's degree from Harvard and a law degree from Harvard Law School. He married Ellen Jay, a Boston socialite and direct descendant of Founding Father and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, on June 22, 1921. The couple had three children: Clarinda, Ellen, and Lloyd. Early career and federal service He moved to New York City in 1922, and was recruited by Elihu Root himself to join the prominent firm of Root, Clark, Buckner & Howland. He joined the National Urban League in 1924, after two African American men asked him to be treasurer of the nascent organization. He immediately agreed, and later said that it was this organization which made him aware of the true extent of racial discrimination in the United States. In 1926 he opened his own practice.