In which the author wonders, why do we seem to have forgotten Samuel Phillips? by Donna LeFebvre ’ 75 (JD) BROTHER
THEIR
Charles Cornelia
amuel Field Phillips might be the
most extraordinary Chapel Hill lawyer
and civil rights champion you’ve
never heard of. His sister, the bell
ringer, sure. His brother, CEO of
the University for a couple of
years, yes. Maybe even his father,
a bigamist who deserted the
Sam, class of 1841, argued the most
famous U.S. Supreme Court civil rights
cases of the 19th century as solicitor gen-
eral under President Ulysses Grant. He rep-
resented Homer Plessy in the landmark
Plessy v. Ferguson and argued passionately
in his legal brief against the “separate but
equal” doctrine of racial segregation.
Now you’re starting to get it. In the
racially charged politics of the Reconstruc-
tion era, Sam Phillips wasn’t “one of us.”
As a lawyer and teacher of law-related
courses to undergrads at UNC, I’d read the
Plessy case dozens of times, but not until
about 15 years ago did I actually look
closely at the line that immediately precedes
any court’s opinion, the line that identifies
the lawyers: It reads “A.W. Tourgee and S.F.
Phillips, for plaintiff in error.”
I was astonished: I realized these lawyers
were in fact North Carolinians. Albion
44
November/December 2011
