A celebration of the life of Prof. George Strickler

Tulane Law School will celebrate on Nov. 8 the life Professor Emeritus George Strickler, who fought to desegregate Southern schools and for civil rights in the 1960s, and served on the law faculty for 37 years.

Friends, former colleagues, and family are invited to celebrate Strickler's life at 4:30 p.m. at Tulane Law School's John Giffen Weinmann Hall, 6329 Freret St., in Room 110.  A reception will follow.

Strickler, who died in September, left an indelible mark on the law school as a law professor, passing on his passion for justice to a legion of Tulane Law graduates, teaching them civil rights and co-authoring a casebook on employment discrimination law. He retired in 2016.

As a student at Southern Methodist University, he protested the treatment of Black students. After graduating from Yale Law, he and his colleagues at North Mississippi Rural Legal Services were fired after raising the ire of state legislators when they sued to desegregate two public school systems. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in their favor in 1969.

From there, he practiced civil rights cases as counsel to the Lawyers’ Constitutional Defense Committee, under the auspices of the ACLU, and then in private practice. He worked on cases that forced Louisiana public schools to end discriminatory practices, including subsidizing all-white private schools. He also led a challenge to end discriminatory practices that affected Port of New Orleans longshoremen.

More on Strickler's life is here.