George Strickler, attorney who fought for civil rights, dies

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
Associated Press

A civil rights attorney who fought to desegregate Southern schools in the 1960s and was pushed out of his University of Mississippi teaching job amid uproar over his work on behalf of Black clients has died. George M. Strickler Jr.’s son said Wednesday that the attorney died at his New Orleans home on Sept. 2 after a long illness. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1966, Strickler worked with a legal services clinic affiliated with Ole Miss that was dedicated to helping the poor, and also taught part time at the university’s law school. The program’s civil rights work aggravated conservatives, who persuaded the school to cut ties with the program after its lawyers filed a lawsuit to desegregate two public school districts in Marshall County.