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91_HR0940
LRB9115099RHrh
1 HOUSE RESOLUTION
2 WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of
3 Representatives wish to express their sincere condolences to
4 the family and friends of Norman Amaker, who passed away June
5 7, 2000; and
6 WHEREAS, Norman Amaker was a Loyola University law
7 professor whose experience during the heyday of the civil
8 rights movement provided a living link between modern law
9 students and such civil rights luminaries as Martin Luther
10 King, Jr. and United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood
11 Marshall; and
12 WHEREAS, In 1965, Norman C. Amaker was among the few
13 staff attorneys dispatched by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to
14 represent those injured and arrested; two years prior, when
15 the group of civil rights lawyers numbered 35, he was faced
16 with the daunting task of advocating for some 10,000 or more
17 demonstrators arrested throughout the South; when Rev. Martin
18 Luther King, Jr. drafted his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"
19 the same year, it was Mr. Amaker who took it from him,
20 carried it out of the jail and placed the manuscript into the
21 waiting hands of the printer; and
22 WHEREAS, Mr. Amaker had been hired into the Legal Defense
23 Fund by soon-to-be United States Supreme Court Justice
24 Thurgood Marshall, and in 10 years with the group, Mr. Amaker
25 argued or had a hand in a number of cases that ultimately
26 would be decided before the nation's high court; he had a
27 front row seat to many events of the civil rights movement,
28 and in any case was intimately familiar with the
29 personalities and the legal issues interweaving them; and
30 WHEREAS, At Loyola University, Mr. Amaker's influence in
31 civil rights circles helped attract numbers of famous
32 speakers to the university; he was considered an expert on
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1 civil rights law and federal civil procedures; his writings,
2 which include the critical 1987 book "Civil Rights and the
3 Regan Administration" lent a moral perspective to the body of
4 law that deals with civil rights; and
5 WHEREAS, Mr. Amaker was a person motivated by a
6 deep-seated sense of fairness; he had a reputation for being
7 a compassionate counselor in private; and
8 WHEREAS, Growing up in Harlem, Mr. Amaker had been
9 involved in politics since he was a teen, passing out
10 leaflets and working with his father on social issues through
11 the neighborhood church; he was influenced by the community
12 activism of the late Harlem minister and New York
13 congressman, Adam Clayton Powell; he attended Columbia
14 University Law School after graduating from Amherst College
15 in 1956; he earned his law degree three years later and was
16 almost immediately swept up in the civil rights movement; and
17 WHEREAS, Those experiences led to Norman Amaker's
18 involvement in the Neighbborhood Legal Services Program in
19 Washington, D.C., where he was executive director beginning
20 in 1971; two years later, he served briefly as general
21 counsel for the National Committee Against Discrimination in
22 Housing; he joined the faculty at Loyola University in 1976,
23 after previously teaching in the law schools of the
24 University of Maryland and Rutgers University; and
25 WHEREAS, Norman Amaker co-founded the Midwestern People
26 of Color Legal Scholarship Conference in the early 1990's,
27 which was designed to provide both mentoring and academic
28 feedback to the scholarly writings of minority law
29 professors; throughout his career, he mentored both students
30 and junior faculty members; and
31 WHEREAS, The passing of Norman Amaker will be deeply felt
32 by all who knew and loved him, especially his wife, Mattie
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1 Amaker; his daughters, Alicia and Alana, and his son, Arthur;
2 therefore, be it
3 RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
4 NINETY-FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that
5 we mourn, along with all who knew him, the death of Norman C.
6 Amaker of Skokie, Illinois; and be it further
7 RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
8 presented to the family of Norman C. Amaker.