Dovey Johnson Roundtree

Dovey Mae Johnson Roundtree (April 17, 1914 – May 21, 2018) was an African-American <a href="/facts/Civil_rights/DBK7m6s2">civil rights</a> activist, <a href="/facts/Ordained/fBpC9VlM">ordained</a> minister, and attorney. Her 1955 victory before the <a href="/facts/Interstate_Commerce_Commission/Mg0bXMq7">Interstate Commerce Commission</a> in the first bus desegregation case to be brought before the ICC resulted in the only explicit repudiation of the "<a href="/facts/Separate_but_equal/6umLE2kL">separate but equal</a>" doctrine in the field of interstate bus transportation by a court or federal administrative body. That case, <a href="/facts/Sarah_Keys_v._Carolina_Coach_Company/l1jf3LUN">Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company</a> (64 MCC 769 (1955)), which Dovey Roundtree brought before the ICC with her law partner and mentor Julius Winfield Robertson, was invoked by Attorney General <a href="/facts/Robert_F._Kennedy/e81C6SFf">Robert F. Kennedy</a> during the 1961 <a href="/facts/Freedom_Riders/g1cPgE1d">Freedom Riders</a>' campaign in his successful battle to compel the <a href="/facts/Interstate_Commerce_Commission/Mg0bXMq7">Interstate Commerce Commission</a> to enforce its rulings and end <a href="/facts/Jim_Crow_laws/uds2gQn8">Jim Crow</a> laws in public transportation.
A protégé of black activist and educator <a href="/facts/Mary_McLeod_Bethune/B9PnHCjp">Mary McLeod Bethune</a>, Roundtree was selected by Bethune for the first class of African-American women to be trained as officers in the newly created Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (later the <a href="/facts/Women%27s_Army_Corps/qnkUWqyV">Women's Army Corps</a>) during <a href="/facts/World_War_II/2efV5L1U">World War II</a>. In 1961 she became one of the first women to receive full ministerial status in the <a href="/facts/African_Methodist_Episcopal_Church/N4zB3QgL">African Methodist Episcopal Church</a>, which had just begun ordaining women at a level beyond mere preachers in 1960. With her controversial admission to the all-white Women's Bar of the District of Columbia in 1962, she broke the color bar for minority women in the Washington legal community. In one of Washington's most sensational and widely covered murder cases, United States v. Ray Crump, tried in the summer of 1965 on the eve of the Watts riots, Roundtree won acquittal for the black laborer accused of the murder of <a href="/facts/Georgetown,_Washington,_D.C./HaTUJkwQ">Georgetown</a> socialite (and former wife of a <a href="/facts/Central_Intelligence_Agency/U7urmQYL">CIA</a> officer) <a href="/facts/Mary_Pinchot_Meyer/m0Sdz9Ae">Mary Pinchot Meyer</a>, a woman with romantic ties to President <a href="/facts/John_F._Kennedy/1cdDaswg">John F. Kennedy</a>.
The founding partner of the <a href="/facts/Washington,_D.C./enXPK156">Washington, D.C.</a> law firm of Roundtree, Knox, Hunter and Parker in 1970 following the death of her first law partner Julius Robertson in 1961, Roundtree was special consultant for legal affairs to the AME Church, and General Counsel to the <a href="/facts/National_Council_of_Negro_Women/RwFrWACX">National Council of Negro Women</a>. She was the inspiration for actress <a href="/facts/Cicely_Tyson/e6aGjsq2">Cicely Tyson</a>'s depiction of a maverick <a href="/facts/Civil_rights/DBK7m6s2">civil rights</a> lawyer in the television series "Sweet Justice", and the recipient, along with retired Supreme Court Justice <a href="/facts/Sandra_Day_O%27Connor/FfmIB33L">Sandra Day O'Connor</a>, of the <a href="/facts/American_Bar_Association/LAP40u3p">American Bar Association</a>'s 2000 <a href="/facts/Margaret_Brent/U7kRaVj5">Margaret Brent</a> Women Lawyers of Achievement Award.

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Dovey Johnson Roundtree